


Carry Me Home (Tonight)

by blasthisass



Category: Glee
Genre: Bad Boy Kurt, M/M, Minor Violence, i dont' know tags elave me alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-05 01:09:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 154,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1087803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blasthisass/pseuds/blasthisass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As disagreements continue to rage in the Anderson household, Blaine is forced to spend his evenings behind a bar to pay his way through OSU. It’s not an ideal solution, but the money is good and he manages well enough. That may very well change, however, when the interested gaze of Kurt Hummel, self-proclaimed resident bad-boy, lands on him. And it seems that Kurt doesn’t have the word ‘no’ in his vocabulary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

At nine on a Friday night, Hampton’s Bar and Grille on King Avenue in Columbus, Ohio was oddly quiet. There were the clusters of sports fanatics glued to the various television screens, watching a football game, and a handful of sophomores playing pool, but other than that, it was relatively empty.  
  
Blaine leaned against the bar, tapping his finger on the countertop as he watched the clock impatiently. He wasn’t holding out for the night to remain silent. It was a Friday and there was a game that night, which meant that as soon as it was over, there would be streams of fans flooding into the place, either ecstatic from the win or bitching about the loss.  
  
But maybe, if he held out for a couple more minutes, his boss would call it a night and then maybe—  
  
His thought was cut off as the doors of the bar burst open and a shout of, “You, Blaine! Anderson! Send a couple of rounds over here!” sounded through the bar.  
  
Blaine wrenched his eyes from the clock to see the grinning face of his old high school fellow-alum and freshman year roommate. Behind the beaming face, he could see, as he’d expected, swarms of post-game college students flooding in.  
  
“How’d we do?” he asked over his shoulder as he reached down to start filling up glasses.  
  
“Fucking _owned_ them, man!” David grinned. “Major blowout tonight, by the way. Tons of school spirit and general drunken debauchery. You and Matt should stop by.”  
  
Blaine grinned and slid some beers across the counter at his friend. “We’ll see, though with you lot in here now I doubt I’m getting off any time soon.”  
  
David pouted, but took the beers and disappeared into the yelling crowd. A roar of cheers indicated that the alcohol had reached its destination.  
  
And so, what had begun as a quiet night at Ohio State’s main campus sports bar soon turned into the usual crowd of college students. Before long someone had managed to turn up the TVs and the rock music on the radio to their maximum volumes. Blaine expertly slid shots down the bar at a couple of football players that had clearly had enough to drink already, but the amount of alcohol consumed also correlated well with the amount of money they were happy to dish out in tips.  
  
“Yo, Anderson, I need a couple more rounds!”  
  
Blaine nodded his thanks as several dollar bills were slapped into his palm and he eased his way to the end of the bar toward a blonde girl, who was busy smiling cheekily at him.  
  
“How’s it going, good sir?” she yelled over the music, her eyes twinkling even in the dimly lit bar.  
  
“Oh, you know . . .” Blaine muttered, placing a full glass of beer on her tray and reaching for an empty one.  
  
She snorted. “You’re hating this right now, aren’t you?”  
  
“What are you talking about, Cas?”  
  
“God, you’re so annoyed, I love it,” Cassie laughed, settling down on the bar stool to watch him work. “A bar like this is every bartender’s dream. Anyone can earn more in an hour by way of tips than they could for a whole day of minimum wage anywhere else, but Blaine Anderson can’t stand the crowd because it means he won’t be allowed to strum out the mellow tune on his guitar all night.”  
  
Blaine glared at her with mock annoyance. “How long did it take you to wash all that beer out of your hair the last time you pissed me off, Cas?” When she simply continued to grin at him, sticking out her tongue in response, he placed the last glass of beer on her tray and leaned against the bar. “And believe me, I don’t hate the busy nights and the tips. They are what’s been paying my rent and tuition ever since I declared my major and my father deemed me to be unworthy of the Anderson name.”  
  
Cassie’s eyes crinkled sympathetically. “Did you tell your dad that I think it’s hot to have a musician in the family?”  
  
“I don’t understand how it is that you’ve met my father and still think that saying that would be a good idea,” Blaine laughed. It didn’t sound bitter anymore to him, the chuckle—it had been almost two years since his father had declared him that if he deemed going into business beneath him then he could damn well pay for his own education. Since then he’d decided not to waste his time holding a grudge—besides, there were only so many angsty songs one could write before they started to get old and cliché. “Honestly, I think he could handle me not being the son he quite pictured if I would at least follow in his footsteps career-wise.”  
  
“Really, you think he would have let you become an English and music major without batting an eyelid if you weren’t gay?”  
  
“A guy can dream.”  
  
“Well,” she grinned, leaning close to him over the bar. “You can tell your father that your sexuality does not impede the desire of every girl on campus, yours truly included, from wanting to do you.”  
  
Blaine laughed loudly and Cassie’s eyes twinkled. “Somehow I doubt that would help.”  
  
“Damn—”  
  
“Hey, bartender!”  
  
  
The voice that rose above the sea of voices in the crowd was familiar and as Cassie’s face lit up at the sound of it, Blaine cringed. He looked over his shoulder and his eyes met the icy blue glow of the eyes of the owner of the voice, their sparkle contrasting against the warm glow of the bar and the dark leather of his jacket.  
  
“How about you stop flirting long enough to do your job?” he called out again, seeing Blaine looking back at him.  
  
Blaine closed his eyes momentarily before turning back to Cassie, trying not to get annoyed at the way her eyes had brightened in excitement.  
  
“Oh, fuck yes,” she breathed, looking at the boy whose voice had pierced the air like a bell. “And here I was worried the night would be a total drag.”  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes. “You find him far more fascinating than he actually is.”  
  
“Oh, don’t be such a stick in the mud, Blaine Anderson. I’m going to deliver these and then I’m coming back to place bets.” She vanished among the football players with the tray of alcohol balanced expertly over her head before Blaine could formulate a response, forcing him to simply shake his head and make his way over to the boy.  
  
“Finally. I’ll have a beer.” With the curt request, the boy flicked the loose strands of his upswept hair out of his eyes and turned his back on the bar, leaning his leather-clad shoulders against it and surveying the crowd like a wild animal stalking out its prey. Blaine watched him do so, briefly observing the strong line of his jaw flexing as he clicked his tongue ring against the backs of his teeth. As though sensing the lack of movement behind him, the boy quickly turned his sharp gaze back onto Blaine in a way that seemed to slash like a knife. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow and resisted the urge to say something equally rude in response; the last thing he needed at the moment was to allow some punky teenager to get under his skin. Instead, he held out his hand and said, “ID,” with as much smugness as he could muster.  
  
The boy’s eyes narrowed indignantly. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he demanded.  
  
Blaine smirked. “You called me over here to do my job, so that’s what I’m doing.”  
  
The boy looked like it might be more worth it to punch Blaine than comply and get his alcohol, but with a mutter of, “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he fished his wallet out of the back pocket of his tight black jeans and tossed his ID at Blaine, who surveyed it with a knowing look. He felt as though he should be above goading teenagers who had more attitude than was healthy, but something about the kid never failed to crawl under his skin and irritate him to no end. After a moment he handed back the ID with an exaggeratingly sweet smile and a full glass of beer.  
  
The beer was grabbed with rough impatience, payment dropped on the small ring of liquidy condensation that was left behind. Without another word the boy was gone, ducking into the crowd and stalking toward a table of football players who were clearly reenacting the highlights of the game.  
  
“Wow, such a large tip. Thanks, dude,” Blaine muttered sarcastically as he picked up the money and slid it into a cashbox in a drawer behind the bar.  
  
He’d barely had time to breath out the frustrated breath that he’d been holding when the vacated bar stool before him was filled by Cassie.  
  
“God, your face every time he comes in. Utterly priceless,” she laughed, jabbing a finger in the direction of his cheek.  
  
“You know, the only reason you find him so entertaining is because you don’t have to actually interact with him,” Blaine retorted.  
  
“Also, that face you make _every time_ ,” she teased back. “Pure gold. But shhh, I didn’t take my five early for you. I did it so we could play my favorite game of all time: which lucky homophobic jock will the lovely Lawrence Kingston be going home with tonight?”  
  
Blaine groaned. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t call him that.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because that’s not his name,” Blaine answered, planting a smile on his face as he pushed several shots toward a group of newcomers.  
  
Cassie raised her eyebrows and looked away from the boy in question, who seemed to have found himself a target and was moving in for the kill. “And what makes you say that, Oh-wise-one?”  
  
Blaine snorted and leaned toward her over the bar. “The same way I know he’s not 21. Though it has been a while since I’ve needed one, I still know a fake ID when I see it. It’s an impressively good one, I’ll give him that, but it’s definitely a fake.”  
  
Cassie frowned. “You still serve him.”  
  
“Please, like he wouldn’t get it anyway.”  
  
Cassie didn’t answer, him a curious look, as though she’d discerned something unexpected in his words, but she didn’t comment on it. She instead turned her back to the bar and scanned the boy up and down as his entire body pressed up against his chosen jock, his eyes narrowed seductively as he breathed something in the latter’s ear.  
  
Blaine flicked the dishrag he had been resting over his shoulder forward and started wiping the bar clean when Cas muttered, “God, that’s fucking impressive.”  
  
Blaine clenched his teeth, wishing the unnecessary topic of conversation would simply die down. He knew exactly what she was referring to and really, she was putting far too much stock in the annoying punk. “No, it’s not.”  
  
“Oh, come on, Anderson. Even you have to admit that coming to a sports bar at a Big 10 school and successfully picking up a random, potentially homophobic and most likely straight jock every time takes some skill.”  
  
“No. It just takes a vast amount of alcohol.”  
  
“So you’re saying that I could get with you if only I gave you enough to drink?”  
  
“I . . . what, no,” Blaine muttered, casting Cassie a confused look. Sometimes he marveled at her unrelenting talent of steering the conversation back to some joke regarding her trying to get into his pants. “Besides, we’re different.”  
  
“Because you’re gay and I’m a girl? Because I’m not an obnoxious homophobic jock? Are you arguing with me or supporting my statement?”  
  
Blaine shook his head, ignoring the way her eyes twinkled victoriously. “I’m just saying that you have no idea what goes on outside this bar and for a homophobic straight guy, the realization that there’s nowhere to stick it will eventually kick in, no matter how much alcohol he’s had.”  
  
“Please, there’s always somewhere to stick it,” Cassie replied with a wink, but her swift reply carried with it a strange, knowing look. She pursed her lips thoughtfully before speaking again. “But okay, fine. I’ll give you that. You know I’m right, though, and I’m content just patiently waiting for the day when he takes off whatever blinders he’s wearing and realizes what a bombshell you are and decides to come after you. Watching you eat your words will be pure entertainment.”  
  
If Blaine had been drinking something at that very moment, he would have surely choked on it. As it was, he coughed loudly and stared at her with an incredulous look. “Excuse me?”  
  
“You heard me.”  
  
“You have got to be kidding me. I wouldn’t go near that punk with a ten foot pole.”  
  
Cas chuckled to herself, checking her watch and hopping down from the barstool. “If it ever happens, tell me the secret of his success, will you?” she said, walking around the bar to the radio and searching for a song on the iPod that was hooked up to it.  
  
“Sorry to inform you that you’ll never get your answer,” Blaine started, his voice drowned out as Cassie found the song she was looking for and the opening lines of the Inner Circle’s _Bad Boys_ exploded through the speakers.  
  
“I’m sorry, what?” she mouthed over the music with a smirk before skipping off to do her job.  
  
Blaine resisted the urge to throw down his dishrag in frustration like a petulant child, his skin prickling with anger at the very idea she was throwing about. He rubbed his fingers along his temples in an attempt to massage away his building headache. When his hand fell from his face he found his gaze seeking out the leather-clad boy only to find him leading his chosen prey to the door of the bar with a smugly victorious look on his face. Blaine found his gaze drawn to the hypnotizing sway of his hips in his skin-tight jeans, just below the edge of his worn leather jacket. It lingered there for a moment before Blaine came to his senses and, disgusted with himself, went back to doing his job, refusing to think about Cassie’s teasing words.  
  
 _Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do_  
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you  
  
And to think it had started out looking like a peaceful night.  



	2. Chapter 2

Despite strong efforts not to retain any sort of information on the matter, Blaine found that there were several things that he knew about the boy masquerading as Lawrence Kingston. Two of them arose from negatives and all of them amounted to nothing at all, really. He knew that the boy’s name was not Lawrence Kingston (and honestly, any self-acclaimed ‘badboy’ would steer clear of anything that would result in him being called Larry in a heartbeat). He was sure that the kid wasn’t over 21. He knew that he would come in late every Friday and leave when he had his chosen jock wrapped around his little finger. Sometimes he would follow up the Friday conquest with a Saturday one, but that wasn’t quite as regular.  
  
The funny thing was that Blaine didn’t  _care_. If it were up to him his interaction with the kid would amount to nothing more than the curt exchange of alcohol and payment. It really all came down to Cassie and the fact that she (and just about all of his other co-workers) were undeniably fascinated by him and wouldn’t shut up about him until their shift ended and he managed to escape them by going home.  
  
Blaine’s problem was that he thought too much. Or that he thought too little and therefore spent copious amounts of time stressing about how he ought to be thinking more. It was something stemming from the fact that he was an artist, or struggling to be one, straining for inspiration in what he’d come to term lately as a mundane life. He liked people watching, but it frustrated him that he couldn’t always read them. When that occurred, he didn’t dwell on it, simply offering it a glare of annoyance and trying again with someone else.  
  
The bar was quiet again. Blaine liked it that way. He was very much aware of the fact that, given his personality, he was not entirely cut out for working at a bar. He didn’t care for the noise or the amount of drunks that were sure to end up hitting on him every night, but really, he needed the money and after about a year of working the oddest of jobs and trying to get gigs just to try to begin to cover his tuition, he realized that he wasn’t going to make more money anywhere other than where he was now, short of completely demoralizing himself. He hated it though. Somehow, it made him feel like a failure.  
  
“Hey, Anderson.”  
  
He glanced up from the napkins that he was half-heartedly doodling rhymes and verses onto to see his boss easing his way behind the bar, eyeing Blaine with a slightly defeatist look, though his eyes were winkling in amusement at the daydreaming boy.  
  
“Have at it, kid,” he said with a smile before disappearing into his office.  
  
Had Cassie been with him at that very moment, he knew she would have given him so much shit for the way his face lit up at the simple permission. He ducked out from behind the counter, the bounce in his step obvious, and ran into the employee coatroom, grabbing the worn out handle of his guitar case. It felt heavy in his hand, but a good kind of heavy, the kind that could be associated with being grabbed by the hand by an old friend and pulled along on a run.  
  
He found Cas making her way from a table of alumni in deep discussion and, pressing gently against her back, murmured, “Cover the bar for me?” before dancing away with a wink.  
  
“Dork,” she replied to the sparkle in his eyes.  
  
“I thought you said musicians are hot,” he teased back.  
  
“Well, there’s an exception to every rule, isn’t there?” she grinned, but retreated to the bar with a chuckle.  
  
Blaine loved the stage at Hampton’s. There was something quaint and pleasant about it. It had a sort of homey feel, as though he were playing for a small crowd of intimate friends.  
  
He settled down on the stool that was awaiting him and tested a few chords, feeling infinitely pleased with himself when it turned out that the guitar wasn’t drastically out of tune. Somehow his life always arranged itself in that manner, bombarding him with enough work to keep him from playing for a long time and forcing his reunion with the instrument to be an initial battle of tune and unfamiliarity.  
  
The lights were dim and the microphone had the expected aroma of musical notes and alcohol.  
  
“Ahem. Hello, hi,” he coughed, grabbing the mildly curious attention of the bar’s scattered occupants. “I’m Blaine and since it’s somewhat quiet in here tonight and my boss refuses to hire out professional entertainment for you, I thought I’d come up and lively your feet and warm your hearts. I do promise, however, to stop making your ears bleed if you boo hard enough,” he continued with a wink, earning some laughter from the patrons of the bar that had their attention raised from their quiet slumbering. Somewhere, taking his place at the bar, he was sure Cas was rolling her eyes in his general direction.  
  
He slid his fingers along the guitar with a familiar precision, one well written into his soul, and plucked a couple of strings, sounding out a light, mellow melody.  
  
“So, if you’re not a regular attendant of empty bars with their own patron troubadours, let me just warn you that most of the time we troubadours tend to be a rather laid-back crowd, so if you’re asleep I’m sure I won’t wake you and if you’re trying to sleep, I’m only happy to be of service. If you’re neither of these, then enjoy.”  
  
With a quiet chuckle to himself, the absentminded melody developed a life, turning deliberate and he hummed softly into the microphone, feeling the vibrations of his throat multiplied until they stirred the eardrums and the heartstrings of those who cared to listen.  
  
 _You think I’m pretty without any make-up on._  
  
The popular pop song was mellowed out, slowed down to a soft balladic tune, the kind that made one want to close one’s eyes and simply  _breathe_  it in, absorb it into the very atoms of one’s skin, forgetting what the words were and even what they meant and simply being enfolded in what the tone wanted them to mean.  
  
His eyes closed as he sang, an old habit that always seemed to be washing over him despite the fact that he’d had to train himself away from it in high school so that he wouldn’t screw up the methodical, intricately arranged dance numbers that the Warblers put together by stumbling into someone.  
  
 _Before you met me, I was all right  
But things were kind of heavy,  
You brought me to life._  
  
He opened his eyes when the soft strum of his guitar gained the unexpected accompaniment of percussion, the sharp click of boots echoing throughout the otherwise quiet bar. His gaze fell upon him, that kid without a known name. He saw him cast an annoyed glance at the scattered occupants of the bar, as though they were causing him personal grievance by being the only ones there and thereby offering him the slimmest of pickings for the game that he played with himself.  
  
He made his way to the bar and Blaine, though focused on his music, found himself thinking how grateful he was that he didn’t have to man the bar that night. If the kid’s expression were anything to go by, the task would not be for the faint of heart.  
  
 _I’ma get your heart racing  
In my skin-tight jeans  
Be your teenage dream tonight.  
  
Let you put your hands on me  
In my skin-tight jeans  
Be your teenage dream tonight._  
  
He drawled off on the last refrain, holding unusual notes and allowing his voice to boom through the air, filling up the bar like a small tidal wave of sound. He let the melody tinkle away to light applause from those who were listening and grinned, soaking it all in.  
  
“So, yeah . . . that was some Katy Perry, for those of you who haven’t listened to the radio in a while. Don’t worry, I’m not even going to bother claiming I wrote that,” he chuckled before scanning his mind for a song he’d heard recently and strumming the chords loosely. In the rumble of laughter, in his quiet focus, he initially missed the new attendant adding his observation to the impromptu concert. When he looked up again he caught it, the sudden, hard gaze of the boy at the bar.  
  
Blaine was so startled by it that he almost stumbled over the opening of his next cover, barely recovering himself and only doing so by jerking his gaze away and focusing pointedly on the microphone in front of him. But even then he could feel it, the fresh attention, pointed look. The one that was seeing him properly for the first time and ascertaining him with interest, with the raw unabashedness of picking him out in the crowd as the one, the goal of the game.  
  
Even when he couldn’t see it, Blaine could feel the attention and for the first time he truly began to understand what it meant to be  _affected_  by someone else’s gaze—and this was from someone whose interest could not be more unwanted. He refused to look toward the bar for the remainder of the night, but he could still feel it, like its physical presence was right beside him, fingers dancing down his sides, electrifying his skin. He could feel it as it raked slowly down the length of his body, heated and deliberate and with the utmost purpose, his skin burning in its wake. He could just see the bar out of the corner of his eye, the boy sitting almost motionless for the two hours that Blaine played, his gaze unwavering, one hand tapping out a beat on his jean-clad knee, the other holding a toothpick that his tongue would occasionally swipe at. His skin crawled every time he forgot himself and his eyes met the dark, interested ones of the smirking, leather-clad boy.  
  
The presence made Blaine sweat and choke on empty air and he absolutely hated himself for it.  
  
It was late when Carson emerged from his office and announced that they were closing. Amidst scatters of applause from those remaining in the bar, Blaine smiled politely and reached for his guitar case. His glanced up at the bar when the instrument was safely stowed and cursed. He was still being watched, the boy having made no movement at the announcement that the bar was emptying except to cock his head slightly toward Cas, who seemed to be explaining something to him.  
  
The corners of Blaine’s observer’s mouth quirked up into a light smirk and by way of reply to Cas’s statements he slapped some money down on the counter for the unconsumed beverage and slid gracefully from the bar stool. Blaine couldn’t move, held in place by twinkling eyes and his own leaden feet. The boy was halfway to him when Carson intercepted him.  
  
“We’re closing, kid.”  
  
The boy raised his eyebrows, taking in the girth of the bar owner before offering him a condescending sneer. “Sir?”  
  
“Means that the exit is the other way.”  
  
The boy exhaled, but glanced at Blaine for a moment as though gauging his options before winking broadly and allowing himself to be led out of the bar.  
  
Blaine released the air that he’d been holding, the cool wind blowing in from outside calming him for a moment before he spotted Cas emerging from the back room and the memory of her words from the other week sparking an angry fire in him.  
  
“What the hell, Cas?” he demanded, intercepting her on her way out the door.  
  
Her brow furrowed. “What?”  
  
“Look, it’s cute and all when it’s all in theory, but I don’t appreciate being the victim of your little mind games.”  
  
“Blaine, I—”  
  
“What did you say to him, Cas?” Blaine demanded angrily.  
  
She bristled slightly at his tone. “I didn’t say anything.”  
  
“Bullshit, I saw you talking to him.”  
  
She groaned, running a hand through her long, blonde curls. “He asked me who you were and I told him.”  
  
Blaine eyed her skeptically, his eyes blazing. He knew that he was probably angrier than he should have been, but it was a habit of hers, the necessity to instigate psychology experiments on the people she knew, and he hated it when it tried to screw up his life. “And that’s all you told him?”  
  
“I swear,” she promised. He gave her a look. “I’m serious, Anderson!”  
  
“You’re smirking, O’Brien.”  
  
“Well, I can’t say I’m not  _pleased_ ,” she replied light-heartedly. “I told you I’ve been wanting you to eat your words and you know how much I need to be right. It’s a complex.”  
  
Blaine sighed, shaking his head at her dejectedly. “Cas, come on.”  
  
She held up her hands defensively. “Hey, I didn’t instigate it and I sure as hell can’t stop it. But come now. I don’t see what the problem is since you can’t stand him.”  
  
Defeated, he didn’t say a word as he watched her exit the building.


	3. Chapter 3

“Evening.”  
  
Blaine’s shoulders stiffened at the voice, the one that he knew instinctively even though it had never been given a chance to become familiar. Even though its usual carelessness was suddenly soft and sultry, like a net being cast.  
  
Oh. _Oh_. He should have expected it, he really should have. It was naïve of him to imagine that he could have had a week of peace during which there was the distinct possibility that he would be forgotten. A week that would erase the marks left under his skin from piercing gazes and upturned lips.  
  
Blaine took a deep breath, willing himself to remain absolutely calm no matter whatever was sure to come spewing from the kid’s mouth and he turned around to meet his eyes, flickering with that impossible paradox of simultaneous shine and shadow, eyes that, in their newly developed interest, couldn’t seem to decide what color they wanted to be and thus chose to shimmer. It was a strange phenomenon that made Blaine start initially, earning him a light smirk.  
  
Blaine coughed and gave the boy a look. “What can I do for you?”  
  
The oceanic eyes twinkled mischievously. “Well, well. Such a leading question so early in the conversation. How . . .” he paused, letting his gaze crawl over Blaine before continuing. “How _promising_.”  
  
“I meant what do you want to drink?” Blaine said stiffly, grinding his teeth so loudly he could _hear_ it. He couldn’t believe he had to deal with this while he was sure Cas was off somewhere laughing gleefully over it.  
  
The smirk intensified and the boy’s thumb disappeared into his mouth, his brows scrunched up in mock thought. He pulled it from his mouth with a faint ‘pop,’ his lips parting to say something, but instead he let out a low, rumbling laugh and waved it away. “ _Christ_ , it’s too easy. I’ll just have a beer.”  
  
Blaine’s mouth dropped open, trying not to contemplate whatever the hell the waved-away statement was because he was absolutely positive he did not want to know. He pointedly ignored the green bottles in front of him, glowing slightly in the dim lighting of the bar and instead filled up a clear, empty glass with the golden beverage.  
  
“Here,” he muttered, slamming the tall glass on the table with a little more force than was necessary and almost flinched when the boy’s eyes lit up greedily, his long fingers curving around the glass and pulling it toward him, angling his head to gaze down Blaine’s body in the darkness behind the bar.  
  
“God. You chose the wrong career.”  
  
“Excuse me?” He didn’t even bother pointing out that this was hardly a career because he was not getting into a conversation here with a high school punk.  
  
“Fucking crime that you’re back there instead of parading that fine ass out where people can appreciate it.”  
  
Blaine actually had to suppress the urge to snort and he could tell that the boy instantly spotted it, for the intensity of the look he was giving Blaine increased.  
  
“Look, kid, I’m not interested,” he said, turning away to take another order, hoping to whatever deity would listen that it would be that easy.  
  
To his dismay, the boy’s tongue flicked out to wet his lips and he leaned in, looking _pleased_ at Blaine’s attempt to dissuade his advances. “Why? You straight, Blaine Anderson?”  
  
Blaine’s pulse flickered oddly at the sudden use of his full name but he didn’t answer. The boy looked satisfied at the surprise he’d elicited, as though his prime purpose were to demonstrate how well he could keep Blaine on his toes. The lighting of the bar threw sharp shadows over his cheekbones. “Because I can tell you with absolute certainty that it’s _no_ t going to be a problem.”  
  
The breath Blaine exhaled didn’t quite have the tone of laughter that he’d been hoping it would. “Obviously there is a problem, because I’m not interested,” he repeated, busying himself with mixing drinks.  
  
He could feel it again, the shimmering, dark gaze, calculating, but absolutely confident.  
  
The boy didn’t move, watching him carefully until he was done, leaning until he was practically stretched out across the width of the bar, lazy and almost regal like a feline. His bottom lip disappeared between his teeth as his gaze lingered on Blaine’s ass, his eyes glowing hungrily. Blaine flushed and he mumbled something that his brain seemed to be having trouble processing as he exchanged alcohol for cash and he turned back to the boy in frustration, his arm grabbing a leather-clad shoulder and shoving the light body up and off the bar.  
  
The boy let out a small exhale of surprise at the physical contact, but Blaine ignored it.  
  
“Look, kid, I’m not interested in the least, so go waste your time somewhere else.”  
  
“Kurt Hummel.”  
  
“I—what?” Blaine started, stumbling over his words at the reply.  
  
“Though I think there’s infinitely more fun in anonymous hook-ups, your innocent schoolboy act implies that you might not. So I’m . . . easing my own way in.” The wink was bold and if winks made noise, its volume would have echoed throughout campus.  
  
Blaine wasn’t entirely sure where to start. With the name that rolled off the tongue with a surprising grace or with the eloquently put come-on that transitioned smoothly back into something purely sexual. The name from the ID, the one that had been identifying him for months, didn’t do him justice in the slightest.  
  
Blaine’s eyes widened suddenly at the thought of the fake ID and of the pseudo-Lawrence Kingston and his face molded into a hard smile. “Oh, strike one,” he murmured softly. “Two, actually, if you count the _awful_ come-on about my ass.”  
  
Kurt cocked an eyebrow. He didn’t look taken aback, not entirely, but certainly like the conversation wasn’t taking the path that it normally took. The upraised eyebrow, framing his lustful confidence with a hint of curiosity, oddly satisfied Blaine. _Easy_.  
  
“Okay, Anderson, I’ll bite,” Kurt said after a moment of silence. “What strikes?” His voice sounded like the rustle of silk falling through the air.  
  
Before he could stop himself, Blaine was leaning forward, occupying the space that Kurt had been shoved out of moments before. “Only that I’ve been serving you for six months and, funnily enough, I seem to have the name on your ID memorized better than you do. So either you are who your ID says you are, which would imply that you’re lying to me right now, _or_ you’ve been lying to me for six months. Either way, not _exactly_ a turn on for me, so strike one. No . . . actually no, that ass comment _was_ really terrible. Strike two.”  
  
 _Wait. Wait no_. The minute the words stopped coming out of his mouth Blaine clamped it shut, his jaw suddenly stiff, the back of his neck burning at the look he was being given. Because he had fallen in the trap without even realizing he was doing so. Without even realizing that one had been set. Because he had suddenly become all words and no thought and Kurt’s eyes were shining like he’d been hungering for someone like Blaine for a long time, their sparkle almost evil and Blaine knew what it meant. It meant that Kurt had caught it. That moment when Blaine had forgotten everything and had practically _flirted_ back.  
  
Kurt’s eyes were shrewd and piercing and Blaine was suddenly torn between wishing he had more layers on and praying that he didn’t burn alive in his plain T-shirt and jeans.  
  
Kurt reached into his back pocket slowly, that look of animalistic pleasure returning, increasing with every word leaving Blaine’s mouth. He wrapped his lips around the thin cylinder of a cigarette and the flame of his lighter flickered to life, illuminating his face in a glow that danced over his cheekbones, over the solid, masculine line of his jaw, turning his eyes an impossible shade of amber for the most fleeting of moments before the fire went out and all that was left was the rising billow of smoke that he exhaled lazily, as unexpectedly mesmerizing as the sway of his hips in those jeans when he walked. The spark of embers at the end of the cigarette burned away at the paper as he inhaled again.  
  
Kurt let out his breath and turned back to look at Blaine, who suddenly became aware of the fact that there was an entire bar of people around him. He started at the realization and the new expression, one that was no longer ascertaining and cocky, testing the water with sexual jokes and obvious come-ons. The new look that turned confident and lustful as though purpose were fresh. As though the prey was already caught but didn’t know it yet.  
  
“So, you are interested,” he drawled softly, the smoke leaving his lips in wisps and curling around Blaine, enveloping him, tickling his nostrils and he wanted to sneeze, to expel the invasion, the moment, but he couldn’t.  
  
“I just said—”  
  
“That you’ve been looking,” Kurt smirked. “For six months. And not just looking, but _observing_. Interesting. And yet you sit there like a deer caught in the headlights.”  
  
“It’s not interesting because I’m. Not. Interested,” Blaine said, his voice stilted and slow because _God_ , what was happening? He imagined himself pounding something sharp into Kurt’s smirk with each word.  
  
Kurt laughed. “God, why are all straight guys in college so far in _denial_? Are you just trying to defy the stereotypes that everyone experiments in college?” He didn’t sound annoyed, but the amusement in his voice pricked Blaine like a thorn.  
  
“You just keep assuming things and completely missing the target, don’t you? Shouldn’t you take that as foreshadowing?”  
  
“Meaning?”  
  
“That you’re wasting your time. And I never said I was straight.”  
  
Kurt gave him a mock pout. “Damn. And here I thought you’d be more of a challenge because of it.”  
  
“I have a boyfriend.”  
  
Kurt let out a soft groan, but it wasn’t one of a deterred hunter. It was amused, as though the fact made very little difference. Like the fact that Blaine had a boyfriend amounted to the same thing as Blaine just stripping off his trousers and offering himself to Kurt. “Blaine Anderson, you’re just making this easier and easier, aren’t you?”  
  
Blaine frowned. “What part of ‘I have a boyfriend’ makes you trying to fuck me easier?”  
  
“Oh . . . not so innocent schoolboy after all,” Kurt grinned wolfishly. “God, the things I could make you _moan_ —”  
  
“Fuck off, Hummel,” Blaine interrupted, his eyes blazing. _God_ , he had had just about enough. “I mean it.”  
  
“Aww, but you see Anderson, I like this. The idiots here, they’re fucking _easy_. But you . . . I like a challenge.”  
  
“Well, enjoy it, because it’s all you’re getting,” Blaine spat.  
  
Kurt sneered. “Fuck, you’re fun. I’m going to enjoy this.”  
  
“And what makes you think I’m going to put up with it?”  
  
“Because I still have one more strike left.”  
  
Blaine opened his mouth, but for the umpteenth time that night he was at a loss for words. Kurt grinned wickedly at this victory and continued. “And I’m dying to know which will come first: the third strike, or you letting me fuck that pretty little ass of yours.”  
  
He waited for a moment, as though daring Blaine to strike him out before he’d even really begun playing, but Blaine could do nothing but stare, something in his body numb.  
  
Kurt chuckled. “Oh, you are going to be so good.” He finished off his beer and slid off the barstool. “See you around, Anderson.”  
  
He was out the door before Blaine could fully comprehend what’d hit him.  



	4. Chapter 4

If Blaine were to thank Kurt Hummel for one thing, it would be that he made him eternally grateful for the bar. Not the building, necessarily, but the actual structure that perched like a wall between himself and the boy. Because upon reflection, Blaine realized that there was a necessary element to Kurt Hummel’s game that was purely physical. And, patient as he came week after week with that glow in his eyes, Blaine began to see it when the dark, stained wood of the bar started frustrating him.  
  
It irritated him and the more he kept coming back, the more Blaine was grateful that he was forced to reside behind it. Because if he stopped to think about it, when he was passing drinks and his wrist was ensnared before he could pull it away, he didn’t know anymore what would happen if Kurt managed to cross that barrier. The thought of Matt anchored him, but the soft brush of fingertips around his wrist burned and threw Blaine off. He wasn’t sure what he would do if those hypnotizing eyes were suddenly inches from his own, smoky breath fogging his senses and heightening his nerves, the skin of flaming fingers brushing over his sides, bending him backward over the counter that had once protected him, words tracing patterns in his very soul as teeth and tongue found that spot that made him explode.  
  
When he awoke in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, it was all he could do to see his boyfriend sleeping next to him through the image of shimmering eyes.  
  
“Maybe you should go home.”  
  
Blaine started, looking up at Cas, who was watching him with a slightly concerned look on her face. “What?”  
  
“I said maybe you should go home,” she repeated, tilting her head. “You look awful, are you okay?”  
  
He shook his head, pressing the pads of his fingers to his closed eyes. “I’m fine, Cas. I’m just tired.”  
  
“Look, Blaine, it’s been weeks. It was fun in the beginning, but if you’re getting exhausted over this, then just tell Carson and he’ll kick him out.”  
  
Blaine snorted.  
  
“Blaine, I’m serious. You look like a dead man walking half the time.”  
  
He shook his head, running a hand through his un-gelled hair. “It’s fine, I can handle it. Either way, I’m leaving early today. Matt and I have plans because he’s finally done with his projects, so if _he_ doesn’t show up before I go I won’t have to deal with him for a whole week. That’s plenty of rest.”  
  
She pursed her lips thoughtfully at him before pressing a quick peck to his cheek and lifting her beer-laden tray from the counter. “Have fun on your date,” she winked, laughing prettily when he flicked her off with a smirk.  


* * *

  
Kurt hadn’t shown up by the time Blaine left the bar, something which a few months ago would have meant nothing of significance. Blaine dumped his uniform in the locker room and, grabbing his guitar, which he tended to take with him wherever he went, he ducked out the back of the club. He breathed in the fresh, crisp air, his shoulders sagging slightly as it relaxed him. Clean but for the slightest hint of a smoked cigarette.  
  
“Tut, tut, skipping out early, are we?” a voice breathed near Blaine’s shoulder.  
  
Startled, it was like an old, automated response kicked in and without any further thought his guitar was on the ground and his arm swung out behind him, old boxing instincts overwhelming him. The figure behind him ducked out of the way, hands flying up over his head, but Blaine was after him, remembering old complacency in his muscles and how it had landed him in the hospital for weeks.  
  
It was only after he’d backed his attacker against the brick wall of the bar, hands fisted through old, soft leather, when he spotted those damn eyes, inches away from his own, and his entire body slackened.  
  
Kurt licked his lips, eyes flickering greedily toward Blaine’s. Something had flashed in his eyes when his back had hit the wall, but it vanished almost instantly.  
  
“Well, here I thought you were skipping out early to avoid me, but judging by how pleased you seem to be to see me, I might have to reevaluate,” he murmured, the corners of his lips turning up. Blaine felt his fingers skimming the fabric of jacket at his elbows.  
  
Blaine exhaled sharply, dropping Kurt’s coat from his grip like it had come alive between his fingers. Kurt smirked and walked around Blaine, brushing their shoulders together deliberately as he went, and when Blaine finally had controlled his breathing, he looked over his shoulder.  
  
Kurt had the guitar case standing upright and he was leaning casually against it. Smirking. God, he was always smirking and the smug look became him, molded itself to him in the same way that his black leather jacket would cling to him perfectly, like it had been tailored for him, or the way his jeans made his legs look like they went on for miles.  
  
“Give me my guitar back,” Blaine said, his voice low and wary because it was one thing to have Kurt trying to pick him up in the crowded bar and another entirely to confront him in the alley behind the bar after having just shoved him against a brick wall.  
  
Kurt chuckled. “You should take better care of your things,” he replied carelessly, his only movement the flick of his thumb against his cigarette lighter. He cocked an eyebrow at Blaine, as though daring him to make a move, the smoke he blew out carving intricate works of art in the hazy glow of the streetlamp above him.  
  
Blaine ground his teeth in frustration. No, this was not the way the evening was supposed to go. He started forward, keeping his gaze trained on the case, pointedly ignoring the immobile boy. He knocked the top of the case from under Kurt’s elbow and grabbed it by the handle before it could hit the ground.  
  
Kurt didn’t stumble or leap aside as Blaine swept past him, standing perfectly balanced even without the support of the instrument. As Blaine flew past he flicked the end of his cigarette, sending snow-like ash falling to the ground and turned gracefully on the spot to fall into step with Blaine.  
  
“Stop stalking me,” Blaine growled, his pace quick, but Kurt’s legs turned out to actually be as long as they looked and he kept up with Blaine easily.  
  
“I’ve been coming to this bar longer than you’ve been working there. It’s hardly _stalking_.”  
  
“Stop following me, then.”  
  
“The streets are dangerous. Can’t leave you walking around all on your own,” Kurt said with mock seriousness. He walked close to Blaine, his shoulder leaning casually against Blaine’s.  
  
“I think the only person likely to sexually assault me is _you_ ,” Blaine grit out, jerking his shoulder away.  
  
“Mmmm, just trying to make sure it stays that way.”  
  
“Sweet, but I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself,” Blaine replied sarcastically. His knuckles actually hurt from how hard he was gripping the handle of the case.  
  
Kurt exhaled slowly, humming deep in his throat. “Aren’t you just?” he muttered, his voice low and flowing brilliantly like honey. It caught Blaine’s voice in his throat when they stopped at a crosswalk and he cast a wary glance at Kurt.  
  
“What does that mean?”  
  
Kurt looked down Blaine’s body once before closing his eyes and taking a long drag on his cigarette. Blaine watched him, ignoring the signal to cross the street. Watched the way his cheeks caved in and his slim chest expanded as he took a breath, carving his face with golden shadows from the streetlamp, his eyelashes fanning out over his cheeks. If not for the cigarette still perched between his lips, he might have looked positively angelic.  
  
Kurt opened his eyes and cast a satisfied glance directly at Blaine’s crotch. “Just that your jeans leave very little to the imagination.”  
  
He was in the street before Blaine could process a response, the sway of Kurt’s hips as distracting as his words. He automatically moved to follow, jumping aside quickly to avoid cars that proceeded to blow their horns at him because _of course_ Kurt had made him miss the appropriate street-crossing window.  
  
Kurt waited for him with a smug look on his face as Blaine charged past, refusing once again to look at the boy.  
  
He raised an eyebrow when they reached Blaine’s apartment, but Blaine ignored him, stuffing his hand into his pocket in search of his keys. So close. He just had to get inside the building and he would be safe for the night.  
  
“Quite the living quarters you have, bartender,” Kurt whistled softly. “Never been fucked in a place like this.”  
  
Blaine huffed in frustration as the key slipped, missing the lock. He eyed the two devices as though they were doing it to him on purpose.  
  
“God, you’re tense.”  
  
He stiffened, nearly leaping out of his skin, not expecting Kurt’s voice inches from his ear. Something happened to his fingers as he felt the heat of Kurt’s hands wrap itself around his shoulders. He swore under his breath as the carved metal slipped from his hand and clattered loudly on the cement.  
  
A breath blew into his ear. “Christ, _relax_. Damn, how long has it been since you’ve had a good fuck to loosen you up?”  
  
Something flared in the pit of Blaine’s chest, a dozing animal that seemed to think it would be a good idea to wrench his shoulders out of Kurt’s heavy grip and turn to face him angrily. Which, of course, turned out to be a terrible idea because shit they were close now, close enough for Blaine to be unable to breath air that hadn’t been filtered through Kurt first.  
  
He was _tall_. It was something that Blaine had never noticed before, hadn’t really considered, but now that they were face to face without the blinding power of Blaine’s adrenaline rush, he saw it. Kurt didn’t tower over Blaine, but he had those couple of inches. His breath glossed over Blaine’s nose and when Blaine inhaled, there was something more than the smell of worn leather and smoke.  
  
Kurt Hummel smelled like the wind.  
  
It was something inexplicable and it overwhelmed Blaine, trying to make him forget why he’d turned around in the first place.  
  
“Fuck you, Hummel.”  
  
Fire, in his eyes. “Not exactly what I was thinking, but if that’s what you want—”  
  
“I mean it, Hummel,” Blaine growled. He pressed the palm of his hand to the center of Kurt’s chest and pushed. “Fuck. Off.”  
  
Kurt didn’t budge at the pressure. He lifted on arm, chuckling as Blaine jerked away from the touch he was expecting, and pressed his palm firmly to the door behind Blaine’s head, crowding him backward until he was drowning in the heat emanating from Kurt’s body and the smell of leather and tobacco.  
  
And wind.  
  
His hand twitched against Kurt’s chest.  
  
“Funny thing is,” Kurt murmured, his voice low and smooth. A cello melody. Or silk. “You know what it would take to get me to go.” His lips were so close to Blaine that he could _almost_ feel them and he jerked his head to the side, inhaling sharply.  
  
He could feel Kurt smirking near his ear, the soft skin of his lips brushing against Blaine’s earlobe as he spoke. He was hot from the place Kurt’s breath attacked him to the very tips of his toes.  
  
“Two things. Either will do, Anderson.”  
  
His hand was under Blaine’s jacket, feeling the tremors of his stomach.  
  
He tried to remember what if felt like to breathe without it being shaky. Kurt’s nose skimmed his cheek as he pulled his head back in front of Blaine’s and his hypnotizing eyes were hooded and slightly out of focus.  
  
“Two things.”  
  
It was so close, too close and all he really had to do was close that gap and—  
  
Something vibrated loudly in his back pocket.  
  
Kurt froze momentarily, something in his shoulders stiffening. It was the wave of ice that overcame the boy that seemed to release Blaine from his spell. He slapped the hands at his waist away and pulled out his cell phone.  
 _Oh, thank you._  
  
“Hello? Hi, Matt, hey,” he breathed and Kurt pulled his head away slowly, his darkened eyes narrowing. “Yeah, yeah, I’m right outside.” Blaine swallowed, thinking fast, his eyes locked on Kurt’s as they turned from annoyed to _angry_. “Yeah, could you? I think I forgot my keys,” he lied. “Thanks, love you.”  
  
Kurt’s jaw was stiff when Blaine hung up the phone. He didn’t say anything, only glared.  
  
“Get out of here, Hummel,” Blaine said finally, cursing his voice for being shaky.  
  
“So you can have a nice quiet night in with your boyfriend?” Kurt sneered and it was no longer a becoming expression. He was angry and Blaine could _feel_ it. He’d been _so close_ and it was all for nothing. “Going to let him fuck you, Anderson?”  
  
“Screw you,” Blaine spat.  
  
“Or are you just going to have a nice quiet night of _cuddling_ on the couch?”  
  
“Problem?”  
  
“It’s pathetic.”  
  
“Why, because I’m not out fucking random strangers every night?”  
  
“Because it’s lodging that stick even further up your ass!”  
  
Blaine started, his eyes widening at the sudden venom in Kurt’s tone. “Excuse me?”  
  
Kurt looked smug. “Average night, isn’t it? The life of a snobby, upper class white boy. Sitting around in his fancy apartment arranging covers of bad pop songs because you just can’t find the inspiration to do anything more and thinking that maybe, just maybe you and your snobby, upper class white boyfriend will find the time for a quick fuck—”  
  
“You don’t know me!” Blaine snarled angrily, his pulse racing. “You have no idea!”  
  
Kurt snorted. “Please, like there’s that much to you.”  
  
Blaine shook his head, his jaw clenching. “I like my life.”  
  
“How can you when you’re not even fucking _living_ it?” Kurt yelled, punching his fist against the door as the buzzer sounded and the lock clicked.  
  
Blaine’s mouth was dry. Kurt’s eyes blazed furiously, shadowed from the overhead light by his brow. Blaine reached behind himself and pulled the door open to stop the noise.  
  
“And what, letting you fuck me would be me ‘living a little?’ Because believe it or not, I can live my life without throwing myself around like a cheap whore!”  
  
He froze as soon as the words left his mouth, his eyes widening. Kurt didn’t move. The change in his appearance was subtle, the glow of his eyes fading ever so slightly, the smirking curve of his mouth flattening into a thin line, his jaw flexing as it tightened. He didn’t look sad or hurt but . . . defeated. Like all the air had been pulled out of his lungs and certainly not for the first time.  
  
But it was the first time he hadn’t been expecting it.  
  
The moment that Kurt looked at him, his eyes glossy but not sparkling, was an eternity that Blaine measured by the beat of his heart and the amount of moments he attempted to gear up the courage to apologize. To say something. Anything.  
  
Kurt finally exhaled sharply through his nose and pushed himself away from the door. “You know what?” he muttered, his voice laced with contempt. “Fuck this.” He took a step back, leaving the chill of the night to wash over Blaine’s bones. He shook his head, looking as though he wanted to say something to Blaine, but he waved it away in slight disgust and turned his back, walking out into the night, his shoulders stiff.  
  
Blaine stayed outside until he was frozen and the smell of Kurt had been blown away by the breeze.  



	5. Chapter 5

“And I know it’s kind of generic, but I think your dad might like it. What do you think? Blaine? Blaine!”  
  
“Fuck,” Blaine swore softly as his E string snapped. He threw his head back against the couch cushions, staring absentmindedly at the ceiling.  
  
“Blaine?”  
  
He blinked, glancing over at his kitchen table to see Matt’s grey eyes scrutinizing him over the laptop he had open.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Did you hear a word I said?”  
  
The grey eyes were narrowed slightly, but it was more out of concern than annoyance. Blaine shook his head, setting aside the guitar and trying not to look at the stacks of sheet music on the table in front of him, either filled with horrible attempts or nothing at all. “No . . . no, sorry, I was—”  
  
“—Distracted,” Matt finished. Blaine glanced up at him in slight surprised. “I figured. You’ve been out of it for weeks now.” Matt tilted his head thoughtfully, his hand hovering as though ready to close his laptop and listen if Blaine needed to talk. “Are you okay?”  
  
Was he? The expression on Kurt’s face flashed before his eyes momentarily and he wanted to cringe. “I’m fine. Just stuff at work. I’ll sort it out.” Matt looked unconvinced, but Blaine spoke before he could voice it. “What were you saying?”  
  
“I was asking about that set of fountain pens for your father’s party this weekend?”  
  
Blaine snorted. “He’ll like whatever you get him as long as it’s expensive enough.”  
  
Matt hummed and turned back to his laptop, scrutinizing the contents of the screen before him, leaving Blaine free to observe him. He felt trapped all of a sudden, cushioned by the couch and the four walls of the apartment around him, already paid for by the deep pockets of someone that wasn’t him. He’d always figured he was lucky, for though he’d lost the comfort of his family’s financial aid he still had that apartment, the one that his father had found him before he’d declared his major and that had already been paid for three years in advance. But the wide expanse of the room’s four walls was suddenly made him feel undeniably captured, enclosed. Trapped.  
 _I like my life_.  
  
He cast an eye over the blank sheets of music in front of him and realized that maybe he wasn’t entirely sure about that.  
  
“Do you ever just . . . feel really passive in your own life?” he mused aloud, eyes trained on the white expanse of paper, but not really seeing it. Not seeing it as more than the burning of white at the end of a cigarette, perched carelessly between smirking lips.  
  
He could feel Matt’s grey eyes on him, but the look didn’t make his skin crawl. He tried to remember the last time it had.  
  
“Is this about your music? Everyone hits a funk, Blaine. It’ll pass.”  
  
Blaine hummed low in this throat.  
  
“Are you sure that’s all that’s bothering you?”  
  
 _Isn’t that enough?_

* * *

  
“Do you think I’m boring, Cas?”  
  
She glanced up from the shots she was mixing, surprise etched into her face. “What? Of course not.”  
  
Blaine frowned, leaning against the counter. “Really?”  
  
“Sure. Blaine Anderson, you are the most interesting kid in all of Ohio.”  
  
“I’m serious.”  
  
She passed her drinks on with a warm smile before glancing at him in concern. “What’s brought this on?”  
  
He shook his head, looking out into the peaceful crowds, the athletes clustered around the TVs, the non-athletes in discussion at tables or playing pool, drinks in hand. He wished he could see what more there was to them beyond what they were presenting in the darkness of a sports bar.  
  
“I feel like I’m at the edge of a cliff that I’m meant to leap from but the ground is far too solid beneath my feet and the view is too nice.”  
  
“I’m not sure I understand.”  
  
“I feel like I’m in a rut.”  
  
She raised an eyebrow. “Is this about your music?”  
  
“God. Fuck the music! Both you and Matt. It feels like more than that, like my life . . .” he trailed off, realizing he was uncertain about how the sentence ought to end.  
  
“You told me once your music was your life,” she murmured quietly.  
  
Blaine groaned in frustration, his fist clenching uselessly. He closed his eyes and wished he had a multiple choice exam before him with all the options for his thoughts and feelings laid out clearly so that he could choose one instead of having to suffer through each of them chasing the other around the inside of his head. So many thoughts that hadn’t been there before, but now refused to leave.  
  
“What am I doing here, Cas?” he murmured finally, looking around the dark bar. “I feel like I’m stuck here, but I sure as hell don’t belong. I don’t mean at this school, I mean in this building, behind this bar, just sitting back waiting for my life, my career, my _whatever_ to begin. And when I’m not here, I’m at home reading classic works of literature and listening to amazing music, but when I get to it all I do is stare at blank sheets of music because I can’t find the melody or the words or the fucking _inspiration_. And sometimes all I want to do is leave that apartment without a plan and just do something . . . something,”— _dangerous, reckless, spontaneous_ —“more.”  
  
Cas frowned, her eyebrows furrowing together thoughtfully, her green eyes giving him that same calculating look they had when they’d first discussed Kurt coming after him—like she was seeing something in him that she hadn’t been expecting.  
  
“Can I ask you something?” she said after a moment of silence.  
  
“Mmhmm.”  
  
“But promise me you’ll be honest?”  
  
His eyebrows scrunched together. “Yeah, sure.”  
  
“Does this have anything to do with Kurt?”  
  
He started. She didn’t look like she was ready to be chastising or even to perform an I-told-you-so victory dance. She simply looked curious, her eyes twinkling softly in the dim lights of the bar. He hesitated, but if she noticed she didn’t openly acknowledge it.  
  
“No,” he said eventually, slowly. She looked like she didn’t believe him. “Not really. It’s kind of as a result of something he said in an argument but . . .” he paused, his heart pounding, remembering that look on his face, his exhale against Blaine’s lips. _So close_. “Nothing to do with his mission to get me into bed or anything.”  
  
Cas pursed her lips doubtfully, but didn’t reply. She smiled at someone approaching the bar and made herself busy.  
  
Blaine sighed in relief when she didn’t pursue the conversation. He didn’t want to get into it. Not that there was something to get into, but . . . there were those thoughts again, going round and round in his head, but never getting anywhere.  
  
Kurt was late, Blaine realized, casting a glance at the door. He almost voiced the thought aloud, but then there would be questions. Questions he didn’t think he had the answers to. Or, if he did, they weren’t the answers he wanted. When did he start caring? Why? How?  
  
The door opened and the question of why he might have stopped coming evaporated. Blaine turned quickly away, as though he were a child caught pilfering cookies from the cookie jar before dinner. He willed himself not to turn around until that familiar voice flooded his senses.  
  
“Get me a beer, Anderson, and don’t be all day about it.”  
  
Blaine blinked. The voice was oddly foreign, like it was laced with something that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t venom, it wasn’t sex. It was something that Blaine knew he should recognize because it resided in a box tucked away in the corner of his mind. But he couldn’t remember it.  
  
He glanced over his shoulder, not seeing what he expected. Not seeing the smirk and twinkling eyes and life. Not seeing the anger and pain that had flashed across his face the last time Blaine had seen him. Kurt’s eyes were directed at him, but they were clouded over, foggy in a way that threatened to turn them grey and colorless (like Matt’s), in a way that made it clear that whatever he was seeing wasn’t Blaine. His mouth was set in a thin, straight line. Expressionless.  
  
Blaine had never seen Kurt Hummel expressionless before.  
  
“Take a picture, Anderson, if it’ll get you moving,” Kurt said, his eyes narrowing. “Beer.”  
  
“I . . . no,” Blaine said automatically before clamping his mouth shut. He saw Cas looking at him in slight surprise out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Kurt’s gaze focused a little more and his eyes looked displeased. “Excuse me?”  
  
“I said no.”  
  
“And why the fuck not?”  
  
Cas shot him a look, but he ignored it. “Because . . .” Why? Because he wasn’t shooting sexual comments left and right? Because there was no sparkle in his eye? “You look like you came here to escape something by drinking yourself into a coma and I know from experience that it’s a terrible idea.”  
  
Kurt snorted, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re fucking with me, right? You’re my bartender, not my mother, so why don’t you do your job and stop pretending that you know me or give a shit about me.”  
  
 _I can live my life without throwing myself around like a cheap whore._  
  
“It’s not my job to serve minors,” Blaine said quickly, the other thing he could have said hovering at the very tip of his tongue.  
  
Kurt grit his teeth, clearly getting frustrated. He pulled the fake ID out of his pocket and practically threw it at Blaine. “Never stopped you before.”  
  
“Blaine?” Cas questioned, concern sketched over her lovely features as she appeared at his shoulder.  
  
Blaine held the ID out to Kurt. “I’m not going to serve you,” he said quietly.  
  
Kurt shook his head, letting out a soundless laugh and snatching his ID back. “Fine,” he snarled, sliding off the bar stool and moving to vanish into the crowd.  
  
“Kurt!”  
  
The boy paused, his head turning so that Blaine could see this profile as he stared absently at the ground. “About what I said—”  
  
The profile disappeared as the words left Blaine’s mouth and the listener quickly became lost in the crowd.  
  
“. . . I’m sorry,” Blaine finished to the empty space before him.  
  
“So the bit where you were going to be honest with me?” Cas murmured softly near his shoulder. When he simply stared at the spot where Kurt had vanished, she questioned, “Did you . . . with him?”  
  
“No,” he breathed quietly, something clenching in his chest. “I just . . . he made me so angry and I said something I really shouldn’t have. Something I knew would hurt. But I didn’t want to make him bleed.”

* * *

  
As the night grew late and the crowds thinned, Blaine gained the ability to see him again. He spotted him with the football team’s hulky quarterback. He saw where the beers he’d been serving all night were disappearing. It seemed that Blaine had been right when he’d told Cas that Kurt would have no problem getting alcohol even if Blaine didn’t directly sell it to him.  
  
Blaine had never seen Kurt drunk before and it wasn’t until the spectacle was occurring before his eyes that he realized it. All those months that he and Cas had observed him working his magic, all those weeks he’d spent at the bar attempting to pick Blaine up, he’d never really had more than one beer. He’d never appeared interested in drinking to the point at which his eyes would cease sparkling with clarity.  
  
But he was there now, leaning against the table as he flirted with reckless abandon, the look in his eye and the movement of his mouth showing clear inebriation. Something twisted in Blaine’s stomach because he was sure that something had happened, something more than a couple of hurtful words and he didn’t know when the hell he’d started caring, but he was there now. He was concerned. Because he’d been in that position before. Far too many times.  
  
“Bad idea,” Cas would mutter each time he felt himself gearing up for interference.  
  
By the time they’d started clearing people out, Kurt was so drunk that he was plastered to the quarterback (Blaine knew him, but couldn’t remember his name), his entire body leaning, but it wasn’t cool, it wasn’t contained. It fact, it lacked all possible control and if the quarterback’s expression was anything to go by, he was very much aware of the fact and he looked ready to take full advantage of it.  
  
Blaine’s hand flexed on the counter as the men were told they had to leave and they stood, Kurt draped carelessly over the quarterback, his knees wobbling as he tried to stand.  
  
“Blaine . . .”  
  
 _You’re my bartender, not my mother.  
  
Stop pretending you give a shit about me._  
  
“Fuck,” Blaine swore loudly and, ignoring Cas calling his name, moved quickly from behind the bar to block the door, the exit of the football player and the leather-clad boy.  
  
He received a scathing glance from the quarterback and suddenly wished he were taller because, if it came down to it, there would be no way that Blaine could take him. “What do you want, Anderson?”  
  
Rick or Roy or Roger or something. That was his name. Something with R. “Just coming to take your semi-conscious companion off your hands.”  
  
He received an amused chuckle in response. “Oh, there’s no need. We’re just going to have some fun, aren’t we, Porcelain?”  
  
Even Kurt’s happy hum sounded absentminded, slurred.  
  
“Except I’m pretty sure that, given the state he’s in, you can hardly get voluntary consent, which would mean that not only would your fun be rape, you would probably go to jail for it since he’s a minor,” Blaine replied quickly, trying not to quake under the towering gaze.  
  
“And how the fuck is it any of your business?”  
  
“It’s not, but my brother’s an attorney, so I’m sure as hell I can make it my business before you even make it across the street.”  
  
“Is that a threat?”  
  
“Are you willing to try me?”  
  
He kept a poker face as he was aimed at with a deadly stare, his heart pounding and his mouth dry. He was insane, he had to be, but he stood his ground and after a moment the quarterback shook his head and practically let Kurt slide off his shoulder.  
  
“Not worth it. Enjoy your twink, Anderson,” he muttered as Blaine leapt forward to keep Kurt from collapsing on the ground.  
  
Blaine made a noise of disgust, but it either wasn’t heard or it was ignored. He pulled Kurt to his feet, winding one of the boy’s arms around his neck and ignoring the way the unusual pink twinge of his cheeks matched the heat radiating form his body.  
  
“Nngh . . . What’re you doin’?” Kurt protested into Blaine’s shoulder as Blaine led him to the bar.  
  
 _No clue_. “Going to take you home, kid.”  
  
“Home?” Kurt slurred, the weight of his body leaden and heavy. “Haven’t got one . . . not for ages.”  
  
Blaine hummed his acknowledgement, easing Kurt onto a barstool. Cas eyed him. “Christ, Blaine, what are you doing?”  
  
“I have no idea,” he muttered, pressing his hands gently into Kurt’s sides, searching for his wallet. He glanced up to meet her eye and realized that neither of them was referring to the current situation.  
  
He found the small, leather object in the inside pocket of Kurt’s jacket. He flipped it open, searching through the cards for the proper ID, the one that bore the name that perfectly seemed to encompass its owner. He pulled it out of the pile of false identities and smiled softly at the picture, the sudden affection hitting him without warning. He looked young, the smile on his face was real, the sweater encompassing his shoulders nothing like the ensemble that Blaine saw him sporting week after week.  
  
His eyes were blue and tired, but they glowed with an inexplicable joy, life radiating from them.  
  
Blaine tore his gaze away from the photo, passing it over the address instead. He blinked, read it again, his brow furrowing. He looked up, as though calculating something in his head before casting a confused glance at Kurt, who was leaning his head against his palm, gazing at Blaine with a sloppy grin on his face, his gaze unfocused.  
  
“But why . . .” Blaine started. He bit his lip because there was no way any of this could end well. “Or . . . not . . . I guess you’ll have to come home with me, then.”


	6. Chapter 6

Blaine struggled slightly with the keys to his apartment, trying not to let himself get distracted by Kurt’s warm weight leaning heavily against his body. Kurt seemed to have found his sea legs at some point during the staggering walk back, but that did little to deter him from pressing his entire body against Blaine’s and breathing heavily against his neck, waking something slumbering far in the back of Blaine’s mind, something that flooded Blaine’s sense and made his skin prickle into goose bumps.  
  
“There we go,” he muttered as the door finally popped open and he pulled Kurt inside, flicking on the lights to illuminate the dark apartment. Kurt tripped slightly over his own feet, giggling low in his throat as Blaine stumbled after him as a result.  
  
“Whoa, kid,” Blaine murmured, gripping Kurt by the shoulder to keep him upright as he turned to close and lock the door, glancing at the message board next to it as he did so. The apartment was quiet and seemed empty, but as it was almost two in the morning those facts were hardly anything to go by. Then again, Matt would rarely spend the night when Blaine took on crazy shifts.  
  
Blaine started as he felt Kurt’s chest collapse against his back. He thought for a moment that Kurt had lost his balance again, but his breath got caught in his throat as strong arms wrapped themselves around his abdomen, fingers absently skimming at the hem of Blaine’s T-shirt.  
  
His eyes closed automatically at the heat that blew against his hair. Kurt mumbled something against his ear, but Blaine missed it due to the roaring that flooded his senses.  
  
He tried to maneuver in a way that would turn him around and separate himself from the embrace, but failed in the latter, finding himself with his back to the door. Kurt let out a small noise and before Blaine could stop him, the urgent pressure of his lips joined the full press of his body.  
  
Blaine gasped at the contact, eyes closing, his inhaled breath of air turning into an exhaled groan as Kurt quickly took advantage of his surprise, thrusting his tongue deep into Blaine’s mouth. Whether it was from the necessity to stay upright or his own natural instincts, present even with the alcohol coursing through his veins, Kurt’s body fell forward even further, crowding Blaine against the door, their chests pressed together until Blaine could feel the beat of both their hearts, like he himself had two, one on either side of his chest.  
  
He forgot himself in that moment, meeting Kurt halfway, one hand rising to cup his cheek, pulling the boy’s face closer, their noses just brushing together, the air from their lungs mingling as they breathed harshly. It was the smooth skin, strong jaw barely shaven, and the fistful of leather jacket that flipped a switch in his mind, intoxicated though he was by the tongue tracing hard patterns in his mouth and that taste that had never been quite present in kisses, that of beer and tobacco and spearmint and something as inexplicable and entrapping as the concept of wind having its own scent.  
  
He broke away with a sharp inhale, turning his head away against all instinct. Kurt made a grunt of protest as their mouths separated with a loud, wet smack and his attempt to remedy the situation resulted in his mouth pressed against the side of Blaine’s jaw, open and wet, his tongue lapping against skin as though he were thirsting for Blaine’s taste.  
  
“Kurt, hold on,” Blaine mumbled, his eyes closed, his hands blindly scrambling in search of a shoulder to put pressure onto, to create distance, but he could barely focus. He couldn’t think because his whole body was on fire, too hot in his own skin. “Kurt, s— _God_ , fuck!” he groaned as Kurt dragged his teeth along skin and bone.  
  
“ _Christ_ , Anderson, let’s do it,” Kurt muttered against the point where Blaine’s jaw met his ear.  
  
Blaine sucked in his stomach. “Kurt—”  
  
He gripped the smooth leather at Kurt’s shoulders and forced him away, needing space, any amount, anything to stop the heat curling at the pit of his stomach. As he was pushed away, Kurt’s hands flew up with a startling swiftness and clasped either side of Blaine’s face, swaying a little at the loss of contact with Blaine’s stability, but steadying when Blaine’s grip tightened.  
  
Blaine couldn’t breathe, his face encompassed by the smoothness of Kurt’s hands (fuck, they were so _soft_ ), forced to look straight at the boy before him. The boy that looked positively _wrecked_ , the haze that had been brought about by alcohol, the gray that had been induced by unknown events gone, replaced by the possessive force of want. His lips, parted slightly, were dark and glistening with saliva and the shadows of grey that had overwhelmed his eyes were blown black with arousal, dark and hooded and rimmed with the darkest shade of blue, the color of the eastern sky just as the sun was setting in the west.  
  
He looked absolutely unreal.  
  
“Let’s just do it,” Kurt mumbled, his words blurring together ever so slightly, as though someone were writing them on a page, but smudging the ink as they went. Blaine’s mouth was dry and under the proximity of the gaze, the feel of skin on skin, his brain was unable to come up with a coherent response. “I know you’ve got like, morals and shit and that’s cool and all, but God, _God_ , you have no idea. Just like, right now, just fuck it, you know?” he rambled, his voice not only drunk but _wasted_ , low and rough from more than alcohol.  
  
“Kurt—”  
  
“Just fuck it, Anderson, because, Christ, it’s not going to get you anywhere. Just deep, fucking _shit_ , you know? Let’s just do it and fuck it all because it’s all going to hell anyway. God, you know your boyfriend? Of course you do, fucking _morals_. God, you know what, Anderson, you know what you should do? Fuck him. Just—no, no, don’t,” Kurt giggled, humor tipsy on alcohol and puns, “don’t fuck _him_. Just, screw him, you know? God, no,” he laughed, his head falling forward. “God, nothing works, does it? Just . . . forget him. Forget him and let’s just fucking do it.”  
  
He finished in a desperate mumble and then tried to pull Blaine’s face forward, making a noise of protest deep in his throat as Blaine turned his head away, breathing hard. Blaine closed his eyes and pressed forward gently again, grunting slightly when Kurt stumbled backwards, his lips attaching absently to Blaine’s earlobe and sucking in earnest. Blaine groaned, trying to ignore the sudden tightest in his jeans and the instinctual angling of his head to allow Kurt better access, focusing solely on walking the two of them away from the door without collapsing on the floor in a tangled heap of limbs.  
  
The backs of Kurt’s knees hit the cushions of Blaine’s couch and he tumbled backward, pulling Blaine down over him. Blaine let out a gasp of surprise as he lost his balance, his arms releasing Kurt’s shoulders to brace himself on the back of the couch.  
  
“Kurt— _shit_!” Blaine groaned, his head flying back, the angle at which he’d stabilized allowing Kurt to reach out and pull his hip forward, running his tongue hard along the length of Blaine’s erection beneath layers of clothing, his face perfectly level with Blaine’s crotch.  
  
The pressure was hard, unbelievably good and Blaine’s thighs quivered, threatening to collapse at the sudden lightening crackling through his spine. It took all the willpower he possessed, his very words back at the bar echoing through his head, to push up off the couch, staggering slightly when Kurt’s hand on his hip threw off the balance of his movement.  
  
“You can,” he gasped, his cheeks flushed and curls askew. Kurt breathed hard from his position on the couch, almost completely limp against the cushions, his eyes shining. “You can sleep on the couch,” Blaine managed, taking a step backward and almost tripping over the coffee table.  
  
Kurt’s mouth was hanging open and he blinked several times at him, as though trying to clear his eyes, but grey fog was again billowing behind their darkness. He didn’t move from the couch and Blaine took another tentative step backward, pulling a blanket off an armchair and dropping it beside Kurt as he retreated away from the couch to his room, his heart pounding erratically even with each foot of distance placed between himself and the boy. Inside his bedroom he slammed the door shut, flooding the space back into darkness, and fell back against it, hand in his hair and neck stretched taunt as he leaned his head back, trying to control his breathing. _In through the mouth, out through the nose_.  
  
God, he was _hard_. He felt like he’d woken up from some restless night, body sweaty and shaking with fever. He couldn’t think about anything. He just had to get to bed and fall asleep and not think about _anything_ until the light of a new day woke him in the morning.  
  
He stripped of his shirt, his limbs quivering, and tossed it aside, not thinking about where it might land. All he could think about was how he _really_ had to stop thinking, but he couldn’t focus on even that because the pounding in his heart echoed in his ears, vibrated and pulsed through his entire body.  
  
Kurt had been hard, probably _was_ still hard out in that living room, but Blaine couldn’t, _refused_ to let his mind wander there as he attempted to maneuver out of his jeans, careful not to touch himself as he kicked them off and dropped down on the bed, head against the pillows as he lay flat on his back, immobile, his arms stiff at his sides.  
  
He tried to sleep, but the lights behind his eyes were blinding and the ceiling above his bed was a shade that was too pale, too hauntingly familiar. An ache shivered throughout his entire body whether his eyes were open or shut in absolute concentration.  
  
He _couldn’t_.  
  
He let out a frustrated groan, flipping over onto his stomach and hissing softly as he realized what a terrible idea _that_ was. His hip rutted against the mattress on pure instinct, his eyes rolling back at the pressure.  
  
It may have been hours. It may have been seconds. It may have been a whole eternity compounded in a living dream, but he didn’t sleep and the ache in his groin seeped through his entire body, into his heart and into his very soul.  
  
He flipped back over onto his back, eyes shut against the glow of street lam on the ceiling. His hand twitched at his side, fingers tapping against his thigh as he shifted uncomfortably, unable to escape the reality of the moment. He couldn’t do it anymore, couldn’t stop his hand from running up his thigh and skimming long the waistband of his boxers.  
  
His breathing was tense, quavering with need and the need to repress, but his hand finally palmed hard over his erection and he let out a low moan that he was sure carried through the apartment, but it suddenly didn’t matter because _Christ_ , had it always felt so relieving? His hips bucked up into his hand, the pressure making something pound within every muscle, every sinew he possessed. Any hesitancy disappearing, he thrust his hand into his boxers and wrapped it around himself.  
  
Where he had been resistant, it was as though a dam had broken and he was flooded, flooded with sensation, with the need of the new feeling of Kurt Hummel’s tongue against his own, the taste of him, like droplets of rain floating on the air in the early morning. Like tobacco and alcohol and spearmint.  
  
Blaine groaned, his hips thrusting up into his fist, hot and tight and he could feel his orgasm stirring within him, so clear and burning that it was as though Kurt were beside him, breathing sex into his ear, lighting a fire within his soul and it was all too much, too fucking much.  
  
He came with his shout muffled into his pillow so that he wouldn’t be plagued by the sound of the name that may have fallen off his tongue.  
  
He lay motionless on the mattress, limp and unmoving but for the gasps that kept trying to transform themselves into serenity.  
  
There was a noise from the living room and Blaine let out a soft groan of protest at the unknown movement, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and stumbling to the door, balance quivering on legs not yet recovered. He fell against he door with a loud thud and turned the lock before his shaking legs gave out and he slid to the floor.  
  
He hit his head against the door as he sat beside it, his back to the thing that had reduced him to such a state.  
  
“Fuck,” he swore to the empty room, his voice broken. “ _Fuck_.”  



	7. Chapter 7

Blaine groaned in protest as the sunlight streaming over his face heated his eyelids and he rolled over, his entire body resisting.  
  
His limbs felt leaden and his head ached. He didn’t remember dragging himself over to the bed, but he must have done so. He opened his eyes, blinking away the attack of sleep, his gaze shifting to the locked door and the quiet of the apartment beyond it.  
  
He could hear his phone vibrating in the pocket of his discarded jeans, but he didn’t move for the longest time, muscles heavy, weighed down by his own moral guilt. He only forced himself to move when he heard the phone beep loudly to indicate a received voicemail.  
  
He winced at the stiffness in his limbs, feeling much more fucked and hung over than he ought to given the events of the previous night. He pulled on a pair of sweatpants to hide the evidence of his very hard fall and fished his phone out of the pocket of his jeans, wandering slowly to the door as he listened to Matt’s voice telling him he’d be over later to pick him up to go to his parents’ house.  
  
Blaine blinked. He’d forgotten all about their weekend plans.  
  
It seemed like a whole other universe, another time of routine and propriety, devoid of feeling and the scent of wind.  
  
He hung up the phone and tossed it onto the bed halfway through the message, his hand hovering over the locked knob before pulling the door open, like taking a plunge into a cold pool.  
  
The apartment was unchanged and for a moment he thought he was alone and that the previous night, the one that haunted him like a nightmare was just that. Just a fragment of his subconscious. It would have remained so, a complex illusion, but for the tip of a black leather book, poking out from behind the couch and the clothes that had been folded unsteadily, but carefully, on the armchair.  
  
Blaine needed to shower, shower and eat and regain normalcy, but he walked slowly to the couch, around it to catch a glimpse, to succumb to curiosity and the strange yearning tingling in his fingertips.  
  
There he was. Kurt Hummel, the boy with the undeniable talent of seeping under a person’s skin and residing there. He’d stripped of his shirt and jeans and had, oddly enough, felt the need to fold them as carefully as his drunken state would allow, something that Blaine would not have expected of him, especially the little care that Blaine had paid to his own belongings the previous night.  
  
The blanket that Blaine had left him was tangled about his legs, half covering the dark, maroon fabric of his boxer briefs. His upper body lay exposed, nestled among the couch cushions, his arms wrapped tightly around a pillow, clutching it to his chest as though his life depended on it, but his shoulders weren’t tense and the portion of his face that wasn’t hidden in the pillow was calm and peaceful.  
  
It startled Blaine, the expression of slumbering serenity. He realized that he had never seen the boy completely at ease, without hard lines, wholly wrapped in innocence, his bangs falling messily over his forehead.  
  
So vulnerable.  
  
Blaine paused in front of the couch, the expression in his eyes sad, the sudden lump in his throat making it hard for him to swallow.  
  
Kurt made a small noise and flipped himself onto his stomach, his face disappearing into the pillow that he embraced with such strong need. Blaine let out a soft exhale, his eyes passing over old, fading bruises that he hadn’t quite expected to be there. He recognized them and memory made his stomach twist painfully, for they weren’t the kind that came from kids getting into fights for the sake of it.  
  
They were the sort that came from getting shoved into lockers day after day while everyone else simply stood by and watched.  
  
The sudden need to become a healing embrace, to remove the pillow and replace it with his own body coursed through him with such a burning intensity that Blaine thought he might throw up. He stood from where he’d dropped to a sitting position on the coffee table, hovering over the boy. His fingers brushed feather-like over a shoulder, as though trying to erase all he could see, all the memories and all the bruises.  
  
He pulled the blanket over the entirety of the boy and stepped back.  
  
He hated this. Hated it because it was becoming very clear that he wasn’t strong enough to resist this.  
  
But he also wasn’t strong enough to bear the force with which he was sure to hit the ground after such a fall.  


* * *

  
Kurt hadn’t moved from his position on the couch when Blaine emerged from his shower pondering the strange powers of water pounding relentlessly against one’s back to cleanse even that which resided beneath layers of skin and muscle and armor. He was still but for the rise and fall of his chest as Blaine left a cup of water and an aspirin on the table in front of him, as Blaine went about his morning routine trying to ignore the slumbering figure.  
  
The figure that didn’t move until hours later, when Blaine had settled down at his kitchen table with his schoolwork, flicking carefully through a worn and well-marked copy of Hamlet. He glanced up at the small groan that issued from the couch and he pursed his lips sympathetically at the hangover that the boy was bound to have.  
  
There was a period of rolling movement, as though Kurt were trying to bury himself into the couch to continue sleeping, before he heard Kurt proclaim in a scratchy voice, “Ugh, Jesus fucking Christ, never again.”  
  
His movements were delicate, his eyes closed against the harsh glare of the sunlit apartment. He swung his legs over the couch and stretched his entire body out like a cat basking in the warm glow, his arms over his head, his long legs disappearing under the coffee table. Blaine looked away quickly from the smooth, pale skin stretched taut over his abdomen, from the light, barely visible trail of hair leading down from his belly button to the waistband of his underwear.  
  
“Shit, didn’t even make it to the bedroom,” Kurt muttered softly and Blaine couldn’t quite place his tone, wasn’t entirely sure of what Kurt could mean. Whether not making it to the bedroom was a natural occurrence or whether it was something new.  
  
Kurt’s eyes opened, tired but a light, clear blue again and his gaze fell on the headache medicine for the first time, his nose scrunching against the light as his brow furrowed in slight confusion. His long fingers reached forward, brushing carefully over the cool glass at though to ascertain whether it was real. He looked past it to the clothes folded on the armchair, looked around the apartment with something akin to awe in his eyes when some sort of realization seemed to shake him and his surprised gaze landed on Blaine.  
  
Blaine met his gaze with a soft smile, taking in the motionless boy, trying to remember what it had been that he’d hated about him.  
  
It took about thirty seconds for Kurt’s hung-over brain to catch up with him and remind Blaine.  
  
“Shit, Anderson, don’t tell me I won and can’t even remember it,” Kurt said finally, his tone hiding a smirk though the softness in his face didn’t quite fade away. “Because if that’s the case, I demand a do-over.”  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes, old annoyance coming back with a biting familiarity. “Don’t get too excited, Hummel,” he muttered, returning his gaze to the book.  
  
Kurt grinned then and stretched again, this time with purpose, his stomach muscles flexing before he leaned over and gulped down the pill and the water. He stood, his arms over his head, his gaze directed at Blaine. “Well, who knew that actually acting like a cheap whore was the fastest way to get into your pants. And here I thought you were insulting me.” His voice was light, but it only just masked the sting of the words previously exchanged, the joke a necessary protection from the insult that had clearly pierced his armor.  
  
Blaine looked up, feeling his guilt flooding his own eyes. “I didn’t mean—”  
  
“Sure you did.”  
  
Blaine shook his head, running his palm along the flat curve of his gelled hair. Kurt eyed it with a raised eyebrow, passed his gaze over Blaine’s collared shirt and sweater vest before continuing. “Well, as long as I’m not too cheap for you,” he murmured, his voice low as he walked slowly toward the table, bypassing his clothes, pausing only when he was before Blaine. “Though I’m sure money isn’t a problem for you, Mr. Anderson.”  
  
Blaine started at the words, stiffening as Kurt swayed his hips lightly, his ass settling casually on the table just next to the open book Blaine held in his hands. His eyes flashed because he had momentarily forgotten this, the difficulty of interaction, the inability of the cocky boy to turn it off for a minute. “I was trying to _prevent_ you from falling into that,” he replied.  
  
Kurt snorted. “Right, by bringing me to your humble abode. Very smooth, Mr. Anderson—”  
  
“Well, I was going to take you home, but at two in the morning a four hour round trip to Lima wasn’t _really_ worth my time.”  
  
Kurt had been leaning forward as Blaine was speaking, his eyes mischievous and slightly victorious behind their tired coat, but he froze at the mention of Lima, his face again losing some of its expressivity and Blaine knew. Knew that he’d assumed correctly that this whole time he’d been seeing Kurt not only as he’d wanted to, but as Kurt had wanted him to. A local, the illusion that had been spoiled by one line of address on a driver’s license.  
  
Because being a local didn’t mean anything. Didn’t raise questions of who he was and why he drove two hours every Friday night to go to a bar in Columbus or what he was trying to escape when he did so. No, local wasn’t as complicated as Lima, Ohio.  
  
Kurt licked his lips, his eyes flickering across Blaine’s face as though he were trying to do some last-minute studying for a pop quiz.  
  
He recovered his composure after a moment, though there was still something unsure alongside his usual cockiness. “Hmm, excuses, excuses . . .” he murmured.  
  
“So if you’re from Lima, you probably know Burt Hummel,” Blaine said quickly, ignoring the pounding of his heart as the distance between himself and Kurt slowly closed. Until the name of Burt Hummel echoed throughout the apartment.  
  
At the name Kurt Hummel stiffened, exhaling sharply from his nose as his eyes widened. Blaine waited, feeling Kurt’s body heat so close to his. “How do you know Burt Hummel?” Kurt said slowly, his voice rigid, his face unreadable but for the quick blinking of his eyes, as though he were trying to keep emotion from escaping him through the one medium he hadn’t quite learned to keep under perfect control.  
  
They were both poised, waiting, each trying to decide how far in he wanted to fall.  
  
“My car broke down on the way to a show choir competition at Carmel High a couple of years back and he fixed it up,” Blaine replied, his gaze flickering over Kurt’s face, wishing he knew what it said.  
  
Kurt swallowed. “Yeah,” he said eventually, the waver in his voice slight but Blaine caught it. “Yeah, I know him.”  
  
Blaine waited but it soon became clear that Kurt would say no more on the subject, his gaze directed suddenly downward, his brow furrowed in thought, his fingers brushing over the binding of the play that was still clutched hard in Blaine’s hands. “Lima,” he said finally and Kurt’s fingers stopped their movement. “If you’re from Lima, I don’t understand why you would—”  
  
“Christ, Anderson, why do you insist on talking when your mouth could be far better occupied?” Kurt interrupted with a growl and he leapt down from the table, walking quickly away from the kitchen table as though he were suddenly struck by the realization that he was far closer than he’d intended to get, that he was in far too deep while his armor was floating on the surface. He scrambled for it, his voice harsh and his gaze narrowed.  
  
Blaine groaned. “Oh, my God, will you just stop? You’re infuriating!”  
  
Kurt’s gaze was dangerous. “Stop what, exactly?”  
  
“This whole fucking show you’re putting on for God-knows who!”  
  
“No show.”  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes and stood in frustration, pacing the length of his kitchen. “Oh, don’t bullshit me! I know it’s a show because I’ve seen the curtain fall! Last week and last night and just this fucking minute!”  
  
“You don’t know shit about me and I’m sure as hell not some fucking socialite charity project, so why don’t you just stop pretending that you give a fuck?” Kurt yelled, his armor on again and glistening in the morning sunlight.  
  
Blaine didn’t answer, his gaze lingering on the murderous glint of Kurt’s eye and the way his long, toned arms had come up to wrap around his bare, heaving chest. He looked his age then, young and constantly playing defense.  
  
He could have said a lot of things then. “Fine, I will,” or “Get the hell out of my apartment,” but the words that met his tongue first were a quiet whisper of, “I do care.”  
  
Kurt’s gaze flickered up to Blaine’s face, narrowed and ascertaining and Blaine took a quick step back at the intensity of it. Kurt licked his lips, his eyes scanning Blaine up and down as though he were looking for some way to gauge Blaine’s honesty, to gain his true meaning. Blaine felt exposed under the gaze that lingered at his crotch, the gaze that seemed to darken as though Kurt could read the secrets of all that had occurred outside the confines of his own memory.  
  
“Why?”  
  
The question was soft, disbelieving, and occurred just before Kurt’s firm gaze regained its hold on Blaine’s.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Why do you care?” Kurt said slowly, as though the very concept of Blaine caring was completely foreign to him. He took a step forward and Blaine was actually amazed by how quickly Kurt could switch it on and off. How fast he could go from vulnerable to predatory to defensive and back again to that confident, sex-radiating persona. Because even under the strange look in his eyes, it was there.  
  
Blaine felt the cool plastic of the fridge through the layers he had on. “I don’t . . . I don’t _care_ care, I just—”  
  
“Like being the good Samaritan?” Kurt mumbled softly, his voice low and thoughtful. “You’re such a fucking contradiction, Anderson—”  
  
“—oh, like you’re any better—”  
  
“—hot and cold, that’s what you are,” Kurt continued, taking another step forward. “You care, but you don’t _care_. You leave me to sleep on the couch, but then you jerk off in your own bedroom. Tell me, did you come with my name on your lips?”  
  
“How did you—”  
  
“Fuck, you _did_ ,” Kurt breathed sharply, his eyes darkening. “Shit, that was just a lucky guess.” He was close then, barely a step away, eyeing the play Blaine had clutched to his chest.  
  
“Stop,” Blaine said, groaning as his voice echoed a plea rather than a command. “I’m not doing this with you.”  
  
“Don’t hold out on me now, Anderson.”  
  
“We’re not doing this—”  
  
“Because of your impeccable morals?” Kurt questioned with a laugh that sent a flare of anger through Blaine’s spine. “Because it would be so _wrong_? Do you want me to tell you a secret, Blaine Anderson?”  
  
He leaned forward until his bare chest brushed against the fabric of material on the arms crossed over Blaine’s chest. His voice was a whisper, low and dark. “There is nothing either good or bad, only thinking makes it so.”  
  
Blaine inhaled, his heart pounding, something familiar about the words that caused his voice to quiver slightly as he spoke. He could just see his own arousal reflected in Kurt’s eyes. “That’s hardly advice. And who imparted you with such _wisdom_?”  
  
Kurt laughed, a low rumbling sound that stopped Blaine’s breath in his throat. He reached up and plucked the play from Blaine’s grip. “Hamlet,” he replied smoothly, tossing the book on the counter. “You should really hit those books _harder_ , Anderson.”  
  
Blaine inhaled sharply, feeling himself drowning, falling without the ability to breathe properly through the dark blue of Kurt Hummel’s eyes, in the flash of tongue that lapped out to wet his lips.  
  
“So my advice, Anderson. Stop thinking and just _do_.”  
  
Kurt let out a loud noise of surprise when Blaine’s lips violently collided with his and his arms flew up to wind around Blaine’s shoulders, pulling him closer, breaking the small space of distance that had existed between the two of them.  
  
Blaine didn’t know what he was doing and for that moment, for that instant that lasted into eternity, he actually didn’t care. It was as though the advice had attacked him with full force, latching onto him and refusing to let go and suddenly his mind was blank with the exception of the onslaught of sensation that flooded him with action.  
  
He ran his hand up the smooth skin of Kurt’s shoulder, running it through his straight hair, winding the loose strands around his fingers and pulling until Kurt groaned loudly into his mouth, their tongues sliding together desperately as they fought for dominance in the heated caverns of their mouths.  
  
Blaine groaned as Kurt crowded him against the fridge, slotting his leg between Blaine’s.  
  
“Shit, Anderson,” Kurt growled as Blaine’s hips dropped, grinding down onto Kurt’s leg.  
  
Blaine broke away from the kiss, gasping for breath as his pulse raced out of control and his skin flushed. Kurt whined and kissed his way down Blaine’s jaw, latching onto his pulse point as he pulled their hips together, the hardness beneath his thin boxers jerking roughly, desperately against Blaine’s.  
  
Blaine couldn’t breathe, something clenching in his chest, the dizzying heat between his legs threatening to combust. His hands scrambled for leverage over Kurt’s shoulders, his back, gliding over where he remembered there to be old bruises, fading momentarily until they were replaced. He played the bumps of Kurt’s spine like an instrument, each bit of pressure earning him high-pitched moans. Kurt pulled the collar of Blaine’s shirt away from his neck to taste the skin there, his hips thrusting back against Blaine’s hand at is skimmed lower, hovering at the base of Kurt’s spine.  
  
It was too much, the feeling of skin on skin, the never-ending pressure that pulsed through Blaine’s entire body and his hands grabbed Kurt’s hips and whirled them both around until Kurt gasped in shock as his ass collided with the edge of the counter, their cocks perfectly aligned as Blaine pressed in, grabbing Kurt’s face in both his hands to pull him back into a kiss that was all teeth and tongue and no restraint.  
  
He let out a needy whine as they thrust against each other and Kurt hooked his ankles around Blaine’s, trying to drag him closer, almost completely supporting his own weight on the counter. Blaine grunted as he stumbled forward slightly, one of his hands leaving Kurt’s face to pull his thigh upward, trying to regain control and pushing his hips hard until Kurt had been raised to a sitting position on the counter, both of his legs wound tightly around Blaine’s waist.  
  
“Fuck,” Kurt groaned, his hands skimming up under Blaine’s shirt, their pressure hot over sweaty skin, making Blaine whine deep in his throat and thrust upward harder, his groin, his entire body aching with the need for more, for the weight and heat and pleasure of the fullness of Kurt’s long, lithe body.  
  
There was some sort of noise vibrating through the apartment but it didn’t register for a long time, drowned out by the oceanic roar of all the blood in Blaine’s head flying southward.  
  
It was when Blaine broke away for air and Kurt groaned, “No, fuck, just ignore it,” that Blaine heard it.  
  
The doorbell.  
  
And just like that it all came flooding back to him. Who he was and where he was and when and who the gasping, rosy-cheeked boy before him was and the half-listened to message on the phone lying abandoned on his bed.  
  
“Shit, _shit_ ,” he swore as his brain started ignoring the Shakespeare-coated advice. He didn’t know if he was swearing at the interruption or because there was something to interrupt.  
  
He pulled away quickly despite Kurt’s loud groan of protest and he rushed to the door. “Yeah?” he called into the intercom. Fuck, he sounded far too out of breath, like he’d been forced to run a marathon. Fuck.  
  
“Hey, babe, I forgot my keys. Can you let me in?”  
  
Blaine nodded despite the fact that he couldn’t be seen and quickly pressed the button to open the door downstairs. He turned around and resisted the urge to groan when he spotted Kurt watching him from his seat on the counter. He looked like the definition of sex, a smirk hiding the annoyance that threatened to spill over onto his features. His eyes were blown black, his cheeks stained red and his mouth open, tongue flashing out to wet his lips as his thin, strong chest heaved for breath, small pink marks of pressure dotting his body where Blaine’s fingers had pressed into his skin.  
  
He leaned back, his hips fully out, his erection straining against the confines of his cotton boxer briefs.  
  
Fuck.  
  
“Wow. . . . it’s no wonder you don’t get laid, what with how big of a cockblock your boyfriend is,” Kurt said, a hard thread of frustration weaving clearly through the roughness of his voice.  
  
“You should go,” Blaine muttered, tearing his eyes away from the gut-wrenching sight in front of him, trying to brink his own body under control and hoping that he didn’t look as fucked as Kurt did. He picked up the clothes folded on the armchair and walked back to the kitchen.  
  
“No.”  
  
Blaine thrust the clothes into his lap. “Please, just go.”  
  
Kurt’s eyes were filled with supernovas. “Why, when neither of us want me to?”  
  
“I want you to.”  
  
“I don’t believe you.”  
  
“Blaine, are you ready to go?”  
  
Blaine exhaled softly when Kurt’s eyes left his face to look past his shoulder and he followed suit, meeting Matt’s confused gaze as he glanced between the two of them, pausing momentarily at the look Kurt was giving him, framed by that tell-take smirk.  
“What’s going on?” he murmured cautiously.  
  
“I was just telling Blaine here what horrible timing you have,” Kurt said before Blaine could speak, his tone of voice sickly sweet.  
  
“Blaine?”  
  
Blaine looked at his boyfriend, hoping the look in his eyes was as desperately apologetic as he felt. “Could you . . . I haven’t had a chance to pack anything yet. Would you mind just going and grabbing some clothes and my suit?” he asked imploringly. “While I sort this?”  
  
“Blaine—”  
  
“Matt, please, I’ll explain later. I promise.”  
  
Matt frowned, looking at Kurt with slight distaste before nodding slowly and walking past Blaine, his hand squeezing reassurance and possession into his shoulder as he went.  
  
“Not a bad specimen . . . would a threesome make you feel better about all this?” Kurt purred and the noise made Blaine snap because he really, really couldn’t take it anymore. Not the guilt or the frustration or the constant back and forth and he forcibly pulled Kurt off the counter and shoved him toward the door.  
  
“You really need to go,” Blaine growled. “You need to leave because this was a mistake and I’m not doing this. I’m not ruining everything I’ve built for myself for a quick fuck.”  
  
“Oh, come on, I want to get to know your boyfriend,” Kurt cooed, pushing back as Blaine walked him out. “We can share feelings and talk about how well hung your pants seem to indicate you are—” he continued, trying to resist, but something about the reality of his whole world crashing around him provided Blaine with superhuman strength and only when Kurt was in the hallway did Blaine release him.  
  
“We’re done,” he muttered, moving to close the door.  
  
“For now,” Kurt called and something in his confidence made Blaine pause.  
  
“For good.”  
  
Kurt smirked and paused a beat, as though waiting for something, but when Blaine said nothing more he grinned wolfishly and, swinging his clothes over his shoulder, started to walk jauntily down the hallway.  
  
“For now.”  



	8. Chapter 8

They were suddenly, and completely without warning, in two different worlds. Or at least Blaine tried to convince himself of it, the part where it had all happened without any hints, any cautions. But he could feel it now, even as they stood in the vast expanse of his family’s home, separate in a room full of people that looked at them and didn’t know what he knew. That there was a change in the air, the breaking of Earth during an earthquake, and even in the appearance of peace and feigned interest in the dull stories of businessmen, there was war. There was difference. The way Matt’s arm was wound around his waist was dead. It wasn’t stiff, not even cold, but it was lacking in movement, lacking the calm, absentminded games played between nimble fingers and unresisting clothing. They laughed at the terrible jokes and Matt made it sound perfectly genuine, but his humor didn’t vibrate from his body to Blaine’s the way it always had.

“Will you excuse me?” Blaine said finally, smiling sweetly at the huddle of men his father would simply draw towards him, and he extracted himself from the arm around his body. It fell and no protest was made except for a look, one that spoke politeness and anger and the slightest beat of concern. But any issues remained in expression, allowing themselves to be swept under the rug.

The old, tried Anderson way.

The buffet table was always a warm, eager companion of Blaine’s at his father’s parties, the one that didn’t watch him, waiting and wondering if the winter residing between himself and his family had yet passed into spring or whether he was there for appearance’s sake, to fill up the proper numbers. The only one that wasn’t awaiting the moment when Barrett Anderson’s promise of his youngest son coming around to his responsibilities would become reality.

He hesitated for a moment before his fingers curled around the glass of champagne offered to him by a waiter. He held it up against the soft light from a chandelier and considered questioning the minuscule bubbles rising toward the surface of the glowing liquid, asking them to instruct him on how one might be able to stop himself mid-fall and simply float, lighter than the medium he was suspended in. The contemplation lasted a moment before he put the flute down on the table, remembering that the last time he’d asked for such advice he’d ended up hitting the ground hard. He could feel the soreness still, an ache between his shoulder blades.

He wondered vaguely where Cooper was.

“Will you at least try to act normal?” Matt’s voice was suddenly next to him and his fingers skimmed along Blaine’s, cold on the glass, only to pick it up and drink the liquid himself. He’d come to the table, but Blaine knew the distance was still there, the chasm that was beckoning Blaine to leap across, but all he could do was linger at the edge.

He glanced at his boyfriend only to find him observing the delicate, near-empty glass in his hand. “Can we just talk about this?”

“Blaine.”

“Matt.”

“We’re not doing this here.”

Blaine rolled his eyes, suddenly irritated. “Why, because we’re amongst a whole bunch of my fathers stuck-up friends, who might start to think that our relationship isn’t picture perfect? Who cares, Matt?”

“God, Blaine, I don’t want to talk about your little ‘work problem’ here!” Matt exclaimed loudly, his eyes flashing. He quieted, glancing apologetically at the handful of people that had found it necessary to turn their attentions to the dessert-lined table. Matt lowered his voice and leaned in, his eyes dark and serious and the curve of his mouth displeased. “I don’t want to talk about how you failed to mention that your problem at work was some punky teenager trying to get into your pants. And I really don’t want to talk about how I came home to find that same shirtless asshole sitting on our counter with an obvious hard on and you practically kicking me out of the room.”

“Matt—”

“So what else is there to talk about?”

The words on the tip of his tongue lingered and fell away without a sound. _I’m sorry._ Was he? _It’s not what you think._ Isn’t it, though? “What do you want me to say, Matt?” he asked eventually when he couldn’t decide for himself. “I’ve explained, I’ve apologized.”

“You kicked me out of that room, Blaine,” Matt accused softly.

“I needed. . . . I was trying to get him out and you . . .you’d only be fuel for the fire.”

Matt snorted, tearing his gaze away as though in the act of disbelieving he couldn’t even bring himself to look at Blaine. “Do you have any idea how much like bullshit that sounds?”

He ran a hand through his hair. When Blaine didn’t reply, he murmured with a hint of defeat in his voice, “I don’t . . . I don’t want to know what was going on when I came. I . . . I want to trust you but . . . I want to understand why there may have even been something to walk in on.”

Blaine bit his lip, staring at the man before him and he didn’t know what to say. It had been almost two years since they’d first stood in that room and Blaine had almost seen the two of them there in the future, no changes except for the slow grimness growing about their mouths. They’d both belonged there once and try as he might, he couldn’t picture them in the same way now.

“I think somewhere along the way,” he started slowly, uncertainly, “You and I stopped being what we used to be.”

Matt looked up, looking startled. “What are you saying, Blaine?” he asked cautiously. “That this was my fault?”

The color of his eyes held the expanse of clouds on the horizon, trying to hold back a storm. They both knew it wasn’t the first question that had come to mind.

“Of course not,” Blaine whispered, bracing himself for a walk in the pouring rain.

Matt swallowed. “Then what?”

“Matthew, my boy, may I steal you away for a moment?”

The two of them jumped as they were flooded by a cascade of sound, the bustle of important people herded into the room by the luring bait of society and status.

Barrett Anderson clapped a hand on the shoulder of the grey-eyed man and gave his son a smile, one that Blaine recognized, strained but perfect. It was the one that had always kept disagreement behind closed, locked doors.

It sparked an unexpected flame.

“Actually, _Dad_ , we’re in the middle of something,” he said loudly. Their surprised reactions at the uncharacteristic hostility matched his own.

His father raised an eyebrow. “It won’t take a minute. Maybe in the meantime you’ll collect yourself and remember the way an Anderson behaves in public.” He pulled Matt away and he went easily, bent as though he were suddenly made of the most pliable material, his brow furrowed in concern and speculation. He glanced at Blaine over his shoulder as he went.

“Well, well, little brother.”

The whistle was accompanied by a heavy arm being slung suddenly over Blaine’s shoulder, stopping the heart-wrenching thoughts about how small he’d made Matt look. And what he would have said had they not been interrupted.

He glanced out of the corner of his eye and despite all he felt the tension seeping out of his shoulders almost instantaneously. Cooper grinned at him, his bright eyes twinkling.

“You’re late, Coop.”

Cooper rolled his eyes, his hand squeezing the muscles of Blaine’s forearm affectionately. “But only fashionably so.”

“You’re an hour late.”

“Still _fashionable_ , little brother,” Cooper reasserted, swinging his hip casually, knocking it into Blaine’s.

“And they just take that at your fancy new law firm?” Blaine teased.

God, it was easy with Cooper. Cooper had been his rock for so long and he’d always retained that magnificent ability to pull all the negative energy out of Blaine and throw it aside. A grounding wire that kept the electric shock from running through his heart.

Cooper let out a barking laugh at that and turned away from Blaine to grab the shimmering bottle of alcohol from the table next to them. His arm warm on Blaine’s shoulder, he steered them soundlessly through the crowds until they were out on the veranda, the cool winds swirling around them, striking them with a light chill.

Cooper’s arm fell from Blaine’s shoulder and he leaned on the porch railing, his back to it, allowing Blaine to take him in fully for the first time, with the sharp angles of his shoulders and cheeks and the loose wave of his hair and the twinkle in his eye, that casual confidence that had embodied Cooper for as long as Blaine could remember.

“Pick your poison,” Cooper instructed, holding up the champagne in one hand and a box of cigars that he must have swiped on his way into the house in the other. Blaine rolled his eyes and shook his head, dismissing both options.

“You want to chug champagne from the bottle? _Classy_.”

“Hey, one of the best parties we had at Princeton involved every member of the team chugging their own bottle.”

“Wow, and they say Princetonians are snobs,” Blaine quipped sarcastically, settling down beside his brother.

“Hey, who says that?” Cooper demanded with mock hurt enveloping his whole expression. He took a swing of the bubbly alcohol before his eyes found their father through the windows of the house. He observed Barrett Anderson for a moment, looking deep in thought before murmuring softly, “You and Matt are fighting.”

Blaine started, glancing at Cooper. He wasn’t sure how to take the statement. It wasn’t a question. It was very matter-of-fact, yet Cooper’s voice held the smallest piece of surprise in it.

“Couples fight,” Blaine said defensively.

“Couples, yes,” Cooper answered thoughtfully, his breath glossing over the opening of the bottle, the faint hum it produced a soft accompaniment to his voice. “ _You_ rarely do.”

Blaine frowned, wondering what Cooper’s point was in all this. He and Matt had certainly argued in the past (after two years it would have been some sort of miracle if they hadn’t), but they must have been giving off some sort of odd signal that this time was different. And the way Cooper was looking at him, it was as though he could see it all. The turmoil, and the restlessness, and the faint impressions that Kurt Hummel’s lips had left on his own like fingerprints. “I thought lawyers were supposed to be quick and to the point, Coop.”

Cooper chuckled and ran a hand through his straight hair, making it stand majestically on end. “Don’t take this the wrong way, B, but you’re not very confrontational. The few times I’ve seen the glint of fire in you was when you were pushed too hard, but it’s there now. So I’m wondering what has you pushing to break propriety among people who would hang someone if the candlesticks on the mantle didn’t have the proper spacing between them.”

Blaine didn’t answer, his gaze falling momentarily on the bottle of alcohol next to him before he looked away, looked toward the house and tried to see it for what it was, and himself in it. The memories came easily enough, the times he’d played hide-and-seek with himself in the darkness of the spiral staircase leading up to the attic, where he was sure not to be disturbed; the cool softness of grass beneath his feet as games of tag quickly disintegrated to wrestling matches on the lawn, leaving two boys lying, panting and exhausted in the grass. But it was there that the thoughts and associations and dreams seemed to end. Because he could picture Cooper in that house. Cooper the lawyer, the cocky, charismatic guy who did what he did because he loved it, ignoring whether it was someone else’s dream or not.

Blaine couldn’t see himself in twenty years standing beyond the walls of the house, standing beside his brother, wearing a suit and a grim, tired expression and drinking expensive alcohol. He thought of the old summer memories and how easily they could transition from a moment of the past to a moment of the future, from child and brother drained from play to man and lover exhausted from the ecstasy of feeling.

Instead of the easy prickle of grass he felt the hardness of the cold plastic of his fridge against his back.

“Maybe I have been pushed one too many times,” he muttered. He felt Cooper make a motion beside him and he could feel his brother’s gaze on him. That gaze that was part brotherly concern, part curiosity, part pride because things had the potential to get interesting and Blaine knew that Cooper liked that. Liked the bold and the unexpected, especially when it came to his brother.

Blaine watched his boyfriend for another moment, ignoring his brother for the look of lost apprehension on Matt’s face. He hated himself for putting it there, and he knew there were two ways that he might eliminate it. He stood watching, his back to the outside world, wavering.

When he moved with bold decisiveness, it wasn’t because of a formed decision—it was the need to confirm, to know, to . . . experience. One last toe in the water before he could decide if the temperature was right for a swim.

“Blaine?” Cooper inquired as his brother pushed away from the porch railing and crossed the balcony to the open doors. “Where are you going?”

“‘I am that way going to temptation where prayers cross,’” Blaine called back, grinning slightly when he heard Cooper chuckle, “My brother, the fucking poet,” behind him.

He was in the entryway, one arm through the sleeve of his jacket and his keys dangling from his hand when he detected the soft footfall of steps behind him. He looked up to see Elizabeth Anderson regarding him with that beautiful veil of concern that only a mother was capable of expressing.

“Blaine, sweetie, where are you going?”

Out of all the communications, addresses in that house, he could hear the genuine emotion most in her voice, the way he could in Cooper’s. He finished putting on his jacket and walked up to her, pressing his lips to her forehead gently. “There’s something I have to take care of. I shouldn’t be long.”

“Your father won’t be pleased.”

It was the first time he allowed his smile to be haunted by bitterness. “My father would be displeased no matter what I did.”

* * *

  
It was two hours later. He stood outside of the dark, strangely familiar building, gazing at it with a particular uncertainty. It was an odd emotion, like someone was trying to keep a lid on a boiling pot of water to keep it from overflowing.

The half-illuminated sign over the garage door read “Hummel Tires and Lube.” It was easy, self-explanatory, yet it seemed to raise countless goose bumps along the back of Blaine’s neck and endless questions, curiosities and doubts.

There was so much Blaine wanted to know since he read that one small line of print on the piece of plastic inside Kurt’s wallet.

The building was dark except for the flickering of bulbs near the sign, but it was also past eleven, so Blaine wasn’t really sure what he’d expected. When he neared the small door to the right of the large, metallic garage one, he found that the knob didn’t yield under the pressure of his hand, but mid-motion he discerned something far in the back of the building. A light that was barely visible through the frosted glass, but that functioned much in the same way as drinking a hot beverage in the middle of winter. It seeped warmth into his throat, filling him up until his stomach was so full that the heat lingered near his heart.

It was completely dark at the side of the building, the glow of the streetlamp blocked by the wind-absorbing metal of the garage. It wasn’t until he reached the back of the building that Blaine was able to catch a glimpse of light again, a single flickering bulb above a door that was propped open by a stone. There existed nothing in the small radius of its illumination except for a motorcycle propped up against the wall and, for the moment, Blaine.

And the soft sounds of music that flowed out of the building counter to the breezes that blew in through the door.

Blaine pushed the door open cautiously, letting the music envelop his footsteps, but almost as though perfectly on cue, the song faded into a momentary silence as the door creaked shut behind Blaine.

The soft pace of his shoes on the floor had an old sense of familiarity. He tried to match the memory of Burt Hummel’s face to the name when the music started up again.

_The trouble with schools is_  
They always try to teach the wrong lesson.  
Believe me, I’ve been kicked out  
Of enough of them to know. 

Blaine froze, just behind a rack of tools and car parts, just far enough out of view to not be observed by the boy he was intent on observing. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting. Nothing, maybe, besides a drive to clear his head and a fruitless return home.

Certainly not the quiet instrumental of a song he recognized, but never quite imagined Kurt listening to.

_They want you to become less callow, less shallow_  
But I say why invite stress in  
Stop studying strife and learn to live  
The unexamined life 

The boy that passed into his view wasn’t the one that had pinned him confidently to the fridge that very morning (God, had it really been so recently? It had the feel of being months before). The boy whose light step floated over the stained cement was like one of a distant memory that Blaine didn’t actually possess.  
He wore what he’d always worn: the leather combat boots, the dark jeans. His plain white V-neck was dotted with oil stains. But he didn’t look the same as he straightened up from where he was bent over the engine of a car and moved across the garage to find the tools he needed. His movements were graceful and fluid, not cat-like as they had the tendency to be, but as though he were under water. At the long note that came with the word of “life” his eyes fell shut and he turned on the spot midway through his pilgrimage across concrete floors and oil stains. His mouth moved along with the words, but no sound escaped his lips.

 _Nothing matters, but knowing nothing matters_  
It’s just life, so keep dancing through.

The journey of steps took longer than it ought to have. Kurt’s eyelashes cast soft shadows over his cheeks. His motions were the perfection of control and freedom, the dance one purely of instinct, his fingers moving gently through the air as though he were conducting a symphony to life.

As though he were controlling Blaine to ultimate, mesmerized stillness.

It was a spell that was cast that turned boy to nymph and Blaine into a statue, pulled forward by the explosions within his body.

He leapt backward as his arm knocked hard into something and a pipe went clattering to the ground.

Kurt froze to such perfect stillness that it was as though the powers of turning man to stone were turned against him by the metallic clank that echoed over the uplifting Broadway song. Just like that, he was gone, shrouded in the boy from the bar that had fallen into the trap he’d tried not to set for himself.

“We’re closed,” he yelled, his back to the door, his gaze flickering to the clock on the wall as he reached for a crowbar. When he turned he was a warrior rather than an angel, his eyes glistening hard. His voice wasn’t that which his peaceful countenance a moment before had wanted to sound like. “Azimio, don’t tell me you and your cronies have come back here to prove their utter stupidity yet again.”

Blaine breathed in quietly before stepping out of the shadows, hands half raised over his head. A look of utter surprise flooded Kurt’s face, but not before Blaine saw the flicker of relief that shot through him like a spark.

“Just me,” he said simply, lowering his hands.

It took Kurt a moment to speak. “How now, Hamlet. What are you doing here?”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“Really, now?”

“More or less,” Blaine replied, feeling himself start to smile as the iron grip Kurt had on the crowbar slackened. “Figured since it’s been a while, I’d have Burt check my car out.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow. “At eleven-thirty at night? If you’re surprised to hear me say that he’s not here, you’re more of an idiot than I bargained for.”

“Damn,” Blaine cursed quietly.

Kurt inhaled, throwing another glance to the clock on the wall. He looked as though he’d lost track of time and the realization of the late hour filled him with a nervousness that Blaine had never seen from him before.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Kurt said, sounding suddenly angry and with that his iPod was turned off, the crowbar was dropped back where it’d been and his leather jacket was enveloping his shoulders like an old friend.

He didn’t say another word to Blaine, but simply stalked past him toward the door through which Blaine had quietly entered, cursing under his breath as he kicked the rock away.

Blaine waited for a moment before he followed, finding Kurt looking toward the dark street cautiously. He turned when the door clicked shut behind Blaine and eyed him with a look that Blaine couldn’t discern. There was a touch too much armor in his eyes, too much defense.

Headlights flickered in the distance when Kurt finally spoke. “Let’s go for a ride, Anderson.”

Blaine started. He thought they’d gotten past the point where Kurt would catch him off guard all the time. “Why?”

Kurt’s eyes sparkled darkly in the light of the reappearing headlights as he once again turned his gaze toward the street. He shrugged, but his shoulders were stiff. “If only because dust is what we come to,” he quoted softly as he swung a leg over the machine that had been waiting outside and looked at Blaine expectantly.

Blaine held his gaze, part of him itching just to go to his car and drive back to Westerville and drink the champagne that his brother had offered him on the veranda. The quote he’d offered on his way out burned in his memory.

He was seated behind Kurt a moment later, his hands light on the boy’s shoulders. “Where?”

Kurt inhaled sharply, as though he weren’t quite expecting that reaction, but a moment later he snorted quietly to himself and took Blaine’s hands off his shoulders, pulling him forward until he was pressed flat against Kurt’s back and he could feel the curve of his spine and could smell wind and oil and a hint of cologne that made him heady, barely able to hear Kurt’s reply over the rush and roar of life and engine.

“Anywhere but here.”


	9. Chapter 9

So this was what it was like to fall, gripping tightly to another person and hoping for eternal suspension.

Kurt’s back was warm before his chest, every inch that was in contact with Blaine like a blanket that one would lie on before a fire during a blizzard. It was warming and, on the speeding motorbike, it felt like the first proper protection Blaine had had in a long time.

The sharp wind stung his face harshly, and he buried it into that very point where Kurt’s neck connected to his shoulder. Even as his breath got caught in his throat, he was overwhelmed by the scent of leather and the wind that whipped past Kurt’s shoulder and got permanently attached to his very being.

He began to feel the steady rise and fall of Kurt’s chest as the rumble of the motorcycle died away. The worn leather jacket was unzipped and Blaine’s fingers intertwined over the flatness of his stomach. He could feel the slight quiver of muscle that replaced the way his entire body had been shaking due to the hum of machinery below them. Kurt’s fingers brushed nimbly against Blaine’s with a hesitating delicacy before he curled them around Blaine’s wrists and tugged.

“Off, Anderson,” he said lightly, voice flowing like the mild smirk on his face.

The self-satisfied tone of voice was like a splash of water and Blaine released him almost instantly, springing backwards away from the bike. He cast his gaze curiously around his surroundings. The neighborhood around them was quaint and peaceful, all the homes dim, slumbering as they awaited a new day. “Where are we?” he asked, glancing at Kurt and realizing with an uneasy jolt that he truly had no idea how they’d gotten to where they were and that if Kurt chose to act annoyingly stubborn (or, rather, like himself), Blaine had very little notion of how he would make it back to his car.

Kurt shrugged. He looked less tense than he had at the garage, his hands loose and stuck casually in the front pockets of his jeans, his wind-blown hair settling down slightly from the turmoil of the ride. “I don’t know, Anderson,” he replied mysteriously with a cocky wink, the becoming, smug look back on his face. He took a step backward and did a graceful twirl before making his way up the lawn of the house he’d parked in front of.

“Where are you going?” Blaine called after him in a hushed whisper, acutely aware of the silence sitting heavily all around them. He took a step toward the motorbike, his adrenaline flying like a spark through his bloodstream, but he didn’t pass the barrier it created. Kurt ignored him and continued to casually stroll up the lawn like he was king of the entire neighborhood. “Kurt! I’m not trespassing! _Kurt_!”

Kurt laughed loudly, something truly and oddly _joyful_ about it. He paid no other heed to Blaine’s hushed yelling, instead reaching the line of fences and ducking easily into a gap between them. The huff of air that left Blaine hung on the chill in the air like a ghost, unable to quite die and proceed to the afterlife. He glanced over his shoulder at the sleeping houses before shaking his head and following Kurt quickly.

The gap between the fences was a tight squeeze, a path out of time and space, pressed between the worlds of the residents of the two adjacent yards. When he finally popped out of the space between he found himself in what was almost a small hollow, the kind where the neighborhood children and their parents came to rejoice in life. The metal of the playground glowed lightly in the faint moonlight, the chains of the swing sets creaking like a slowly opening door. Beyond the playground, the empty field glistened slightly with newly forming frost.

Kurt grinned eagerly, his teeth absurdly white and just barely showing, and once Blaine disentangled himself from the fences he turned from his position of waiting into another casual stroll, his hips swaying as his boots crunched on the woodchips of the playground, like the crumbling of a piece of paper whose contents were deemed to be worthless. He ducked easily among the firm structures of play, never quite interacting with them until he leapt up lightly to swing himself up into a sitting position on the platform just before the chasm that one could only cross using the monkey bars.

For the moment that Blaine remained still. All he could see after action had settled into stillness was the tell-tale spark of flame, flickering lightly, momentarily in the darkness. He followed a beat later, ducking through the plastic melded to metal, his fingers skimming over the cold as he made his way through the maze and emerged where Kurt was sitting, one leg bent, the other swinging freely over the edge of his seat.

“If I get arrested for this, I swear to God . . .” Blaine mumbled, crossing the gap one was meant to swing over and leaning against the platform on the other end.

“You’re not going to get arrested,” Kurt snorted, taking a long drag on his cigarette.

“Of course you’d think that. You have no concept of private property.”

“Relax, Anderson, you’re going to give yourself an ulcer,” Kurt drawled. “You’re far too uptight sometimes, it’s ridiculous.” As though to prove a point, he held out his open carton of cigarettes, but leaned his head back against the playset, passing his eyes over the growing cloudiness of the night sky. He exhaled, the smoke adding to the cloud cover.

The memory of the stick up the ass comment seeped into Blaine’s memory suddenly and he grit his teeth and glared at the teenager, irritated that the boy presumed such God-like, all-knowing powers. Half the time it hardly bothered Blaine anymore, but something about the dig had him moving and with two long strides he was across the space of separation and his hand was jerking a cigarette out of the worn cardboard container.

“Lighter,” he demanded curtly and Kurt, his eyebrows raised in mild surprise, turned his gaze away from the night sky and fixed his eyes on Blaine. They had that shimmer in them again, the disappearing light of the moon making them bright and colorless, as though they were haunted. They gripped Blaine firmly and refused to let him go, suspending them both in a medium lacking in time and all other sensations. Blaine’s outstretched hand remained still, though Kurt didn’t stir to give him that which he was asking for.

When he finally moved it had the slightest sense of caution even in the midst of the slight darkening of his eyes. He swung his second leg over the edge of the platform until he was fully facing Blaine, elevated ever so slightly above him. He leaned down so that his elbows were resting on his knees and his face was level with Blaine’s. The long fingers of one hand curled around the cigarette perched delicately between his lips, pulling it free and tapping it once to send a shower of ashes floating down, grazing Blaine’s shoulder like flower petals shed from trees in the spring.

“C’mere,” he instructed, his voice a low rumble, reminiscent of the engine of his motorcycle.

Blaine took a careful step forward, his eyes narrowed warily. The pace of his progress had Kurt rolling his eyes and catching him by the back of the neck as soon as he was within reach. “For fuck’s sake,” he grunted impatiently.

The movement caught Blaine off-guard and at its force he stumbled forward, tripping slightly over his own feet, a clumsy dance for one. His arms flew out and landed on either side of Kurt’s thighs, his body positioned right at the edge of the sharp curve of Kurt’s bend knees. He exhaled harshly at the sharp force of bone against his diaphragm and almost as though the breath of air were a signal, a green light, Kurt’s legs parted and curled around Blaine’s waist, pulling him forward until they were right up against each other, the heat of their bodies threatening to curl in the cold air like steam. Blaine swallowed loudly, needing fresh saliva because his mouth was a desert. When Kurt’s eyes fixed momentarily on the movement of his Adam’s apple, he found the original purpose almost entirely useless.

“Put it in your mouth,” Kurt instructed, his voice calm but almost impossibly rough. Blaine’s brow furrowed, but he did as he was told, placing the end of the cigarette between his suddenly painfully dry lips.

“Inhale when I do,” Kurt murmured, his voice barely louder than the wind that rustled through the trees above them, like he had the ability, but lacked the strength to raise it.

“What’re you—” Blaine started, but cut himself off with a gasp as Kurt leaned in, his fingers massaging the softness of skin at the very back of Blaine’s neck. He was so close the air around them acquired Kurt’s scent and lost its own. The only thing that separated them was the distance of one and a half cigarettes.

“With me,” Kurt breathed quietly before inhaling deeply, the end of his cigarette glowing bright as coals under intense heat, the paper burning away. It flickered, just barely lighting the freckles that dotted over the end of Kurt’s nose, swimming mesmerizingly before Blaine’s vision. It glowed against the end of Blaine’s, sparking it to life as Blaine inhaled sharply, less from instruction and more from the need for air, stolen from his lungs by the sight of Kurt in the dim, amber light.

He coughed loudly as the end of Kurt’s cigarette lit his own and smoke filled his lungs faster, sharper than he’d expected, burning his sinuses, the sensation the same as the sting of smoke against one’s eyes when sitting too close to a campfire. When the burn ebbed away he was left with the coolness of fall in his lungs from his quick, desperate inhales, peppered with coughs, and a permanent element of kissing Kurt residing on his tongue.

Kurt chuckled lightly as Blaine pulled out of the odd embrace, watching him with the slightest curve of a smile on his face. He continued to observe Blaine as his shock passed and his inhales of air and smoke and heat became fuller and calmer. His looks lacked that of a proud father when his child finally succeeded in an undertaking, but there was an air of satisfaction present.

“So, why do you care, anyway?” Blaine said finally, the harsh feel of tobacco still stinging in the oddest of pleasurable manners.

Kurt raised an eyebrow and Blaine could see the denial lingering in the look, just at the tip of the tongue that relieved his slightly dry lips. _I don’t, Anderson_. The phrase was put away for temporary safe-keeping. “So, what’s with the hideous helmet hair, Hamlet?”

The comment was simple, the alliteration of it rolling easily away from Kurt. Blaine recognized the perfect, obvious deflection in it, in the openings it left for Blaine, all avoiding the question at hand. There was the question of why was he suddenly being referred to as the hero of a Shakespearean tragedy. And dig that threatened to bring about the necessity to defend the gel that was keeping his curls down. Instead, he dodged the bullet and repeated softly, “Why do you care?”

Kurt pursed his lips at the aversion to his own and replied slowly. “About what?”

“Me ‘living a little.’”

Kurt paused, not only in speech but the entire movement of his body stilled. His eyes were curious, calculating as he looked at Blaine, the remainder of his face entirely neutral. The only movement that indicated that the entire scene hadn’t frozen was in the sway of stray bangs under the persuasive element of wind and the lazy rise of smoke.

“Because,” he started eventually, the weight of the options lingering in his countenance, his words arranging themselves so that they gave nothing away, “You’re an idiot if you have the opportunity and you don’t.”

Blaine frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That it’s an insult to those who can’t when those who can choose not to.”

“There you go again, pretending you know something about me.”

Kurt exhaled in exasperation, leaning his body back to rest on an arm. His gaze swept up and down Blaine’s body, but for the first time since he’s started doing so it didn’t linger. His heat was replaced with the scrutiny one would give when attempting to analyze a classic work of literature. “You . . . you have the talent, but you lack the motivation to do anything with it, sitting behind that bar of yours and waiting for the opportunity to perform to show itself. You’re in what is possibly the least ridiculous city in this God forsaken joke of a state, in that fancy apartment and the boyfriend who looks like he walked out of a fucking Ralph Lauren catalogue. You have the money, you have the means but you sit on your ass while thousands of people below you, but exactly like you, just wish they had the chance that you’re fucking wasting.”

Blaine looked at the boy before him and felt inexplicably sad because he realized with the slightest of starts that they both stood in the same place, floating on the surface but never quite breaking it. Because he wasn’t entirely wrong. He had that portion of Blaine pinned down but he, like Blaine, seemed content with being handed a book with all but the epilogue torn out, the ink still wet on the page.

What dreams did he think he wasn’t able to realize? Why?

“People like you?” he murmured quietly, but Kurt’s eyes flashed and the hand that was stiff under the weight of his boy twitched.

“Well, it would be just a little bit hypocritical if I tried to tell you to live your life while not doing so myself,” he sneered lightly, but Blaine could hear the tension in his voice, the strain in his sinews. Suddenly the playground seemed like a startlingly fitting place for the boy pretending to be a man.

“Hmm, I suppose,” Blaine acknowledged mildly, fiddling with his cigarette. Kurt exhaled, and flicked the ashes off the end of his own, watching them collect in a pile of dust at the tip of his boot. _If only because dust is what we come to_. He sniffed in dissatisfaction before flicking them off his person to the ground and looking at Blaine expectantly, sensing that there might be more. “So, you’re saying I’ll just be happy and successful and whatnot if I start ‘living my life?’”

“Wow, Hamlet, aren’t you clever?”

Blaine smirked slightly, but something in him, that seed that had him driving to Lima and yearning to know _more_ , was sad. “Then how is it that you don’t seem very happy?”

Kurt’s eyes flickered to Blaine, his countenance startled, shocked not only at having lost the upper hand, but in their dynamic, but at the fact that what he had thought had been a proper mask was actually revealing, the way even the best of disguises were always too reflective of the man wearing them.

“Maybe,” he muttered, his voice quiet like the air of soldiers during a retreat, “Maybe it’s because I’m losing the game.”

“What game?”

“This one.”

Blaine’s brow furrowed in confusion, but there was a weak hint of an old smile in Kurt’s eyes, like it was a joke, framed in that telltale twinge of cockiness and Blaine exhaled in frustration. “You’re deflecting.”

Kurt shook his head, leaning forward again, the movement a contradiction of his simultaneous advance and retreat. “No, I’m _truly_ devastated by the fact that I haven’t gotten into your pants yet.”

“Kurt, come on . . .”

Kurt softened ever so slightly, his bottom lip disappearing under the pressure of his teeth. He looked small for a moment, swaying slightly as though he were contemplating jumping down from his raised, sitting position. “I just . . . I—”

Whatever he was about to say was cut off by a gruff, male voice yelling across the field, wrenching Blaine’s gaze away to a dark police car and the figure making its way authoritatively across the field toward them.

“You said—” he started, his heart pounding, but the sight of the cop seemed to remind Kurt of the person the world knew him as and he let out a loud laugh, leaping down from the platform and snuffing out his cigarette.

“Relax, Anderson. Clearly you’ve never had the pleasure of doing this,” he grinned and there was something more in his attitude that time, something warm.

“Doing what?” Blaine asked, glancing nervously between Kurt and the cop.

Kurt winked broadly and suddenly his hand, cool and strong and smooth, was in Blaine’s and his fingers were curled around Blaine’s knuckles, pulling forward. “Move, Anderson, let’s go!” he yelled, his voice a laugh and the sudden pureness of it startled Blaine into movement, allowing himself to be pulled into a sprint through the intricate structure of play, through the trees and the vortex between fences, where all that existed was tightness, around him and surging through his body, and speed and the pressure of Kurt’s hand wrapped around his own.

By the time they popped out onto the lawn they were both breathless from more than the adrenaline rush, their laughter bouncing off the quiet propriety of the slumbering houses. Kurt pulled Blaine forward still, toward the bike. “C’mon, Anderson! Williams is a fatass, but he can still fit in there.”

They didn’t stop running, whether on foot or by bike, until they were back in front of the old car shop and Blaine was stumbling from the motorbike, his legs shaking, laughter bubbling through him.

“God, you . . .” he gasped, one hand wound around his stomach, his slight cramp reminding him of how alive he felt. “‘Not going to get arrested,’ my ass.”

“What are you talking about, Anderson? Are you being carted off to jail in the back of a police car right now?” Kurt chuckled, easing the motorcycle over to the side of the building for safe-keeping. He glanced at Blaine as he did so, something new and soft in his features. They watched each other as their breathing quieted to normal, though Blaine’s pulse didn’t quite seem to be ready to recover.

“You know, you could—”

“I should probably go.”

“Oh.”

They dissolved into silence again having come out with words at the same time. Kurt’s shoulders formed a hard line and he glanced down at his shoes, whatever he might have been saying hanging unspoken between them, but Blaine didn’t question it. Now was not the right time.

“I have something I need to take care of,” he offered by way of apology.

“At one in the morning?”

Blaine laughed, the sound slightly awkward, but real in its insecurity. “Yeah, actually,” he replied, turning to walk toward the car after a parting nod. He paused momentarily, his hand on the door handle. “You know, back in the twenties, American poets living in London, Ezra Pound in particular, believed in the notion that one could be an artist without having something on the side. That even through hardship one could create something great and be sustained by just art. That such art would last longer than anything created where there was wealth and prosperity.”

Kurt looked at him, his features confused. “Why are you telling me this?”

Blaine shrugged, opening the car door to get inside. “Never got a chance to counter your point earlier.”

He backed out of the lot carefully, watching Kurt whenever he got the chance. Kurt met his gaze curiously before looking up at the illuminated sign over the garage, one of his hands lingering in a gentle brush over the other.

* * *

  
His parent’s house was dark and silent by the time he pulled up, turning his headlights off as he turned into the driveway. Dark was always how he’d preferred the house. Dark implied quiet and peaceful and two little boy sneaking into each other’s rooms after bedtime.

He didn’t know exactly what he would do once he got inside and he probably wouldn’t have figured it out during the drive unless it had lasted until an hour when everyone was awake rather than slumbering. He knew the eventual goal, the words that would lead up to it. They all flowed together in his head like the chapters of a novel, but at that moment, faced with peace, he was uncertain.

The pristinely oiled door made no sound as it was opened and closed and the beautiful wooden floors of the entryway made little noise under his feet after he’d remembered to remove his shoes. It all culminated in a strange reminder of a nymph-like Kurt Hummel dancing across the concrete floor of Hummel Tires and Lube.

He couldn’t really go upstairs and go to sleep because it would be clinging, holding onto an illusion for dear life and he was just about ready to let go. His certainty, so different from earlier that night, felt odd, because nothing had changed. There was nothing new, no unbalance of checks on a pro-con list.

The living room was dark, clean as though nothing had occurred there that night. It reminded Blaine of his life, of the turmoil that didn’t appear to be there the day after, locked in a closet with the cleaning supplies.

Without thinking he made his way to the piano in the corner and sat on the bench, his fingers coming up on instinct and skimming over the keys, just light enough to touch, but never enough to make noise, to disturb the air around him. Years of piano lessons and here it sat, unused.

He couldn’t see the keys behind his closed eyelids, just the dull grey of streaming moonlight, but when he pressed down he knew exactly where to go. Instinct made it simple, the way the notes fell together, like the pieces of a puzzle. A wordless song, but words had never been necessary, not really. Just the outpour of emotion, unplanned and unstructured but wholly pure, like a diamond just excavated, but uncarved. A piece of amber found on the beach where one was simply looking for a seashell.

The cushion on the piano bench dipped but he ignored it, his fingers gentle but quick, gliding to and fro like the rise and fall of hidden emotion in the mile-deep eyes that one would cautiously dip a toe into and retreat instantly because the water was too cold. But, then again, cold water never truly deterred a swimmer on a hot day.

“That was beautiful,” Matt murmured quietly when Blaine’s hands stilled and the final echoes of melody bounced off the walls and faded. “What was that?”

He sat with his back to the piano, his left side just barely touching Blaine’s right. Blaine found himself sinking deep into the symbolism of it all.

“Something inside my head.”

“I loved it.” Then, “Where were you?”

He didn’t answer.

A fist clenched uselessly over a cotton-clad knee.

“You were with him, weren’t you?”

A deep breath. A pause. The ivory glowed encouragingly. “I’m sorry.” He was that time. “I am. I just . . . I can’t do this anymore, Matt.”

It felt like the first truly honest thing he’d said to him in weeks.


	10. Chapter 10

_He could feel. It was sudden and overwhelming and fuck, it hurt.  
  
He’d forgotten how much it could hurt.  
  
He thought that it had stopped. The metal of the lockers didn’t penetrate, didn’t come so often now under the threat of what could come after. He didn’t feel, couldn’t feel, neither the pain nor the ecstasy nor the dull throb of his own heartbeat.  
  
It threw him because it wasn’t supposed to hurt, wasn’t supposed to register anymore. He hadn’t expected it, could have never seen it coming and all he could distinguish from it in the aftermath was the press of rough hands and the contact that for a year had meant nothing, nothing at all.  
  
It was  **his**  fault. His fault that every sensation had become weighted, overwhelming. He should have gotten out when he had the chance.  
  
He couldn’t think. Everything was a blur, the blend of emotion and thoughtless action.  
  
The wind whipped harshly against his face, stinging his eyes. It was the only likely explanation for the moisture being blown off his cheeks.  
  
His knuckles were white and cracked from the cold.  
  
He didn’t know how he got there, but he recognized the building. The only thing he could remember between the hard stench of man in the locker room and the current press of the wooden bench against his back was the wind and how easy it could have been to fly just a little bit too fast. To turn just a little bit too early.  
  
He didn’t know why he was there. No . . . he knew, but . . . but he needed . . . fuck, he needed . . .  
  
God, that asshole. Who did he think he was, coming in and ruining everything? There was a balance and now it was off, teetering on the edge, almost gone. It seemed like a punishable offense. One shouldn’t be allowed to ruin stoicism.  
  
He fumbled in his pockets for two items, one familiar, one strangely less so.  
  
It was snowing and he’d forgotten his jacket in his flight, in his need for air and speed and . . . escape. He shivered in the cold and hoped it might turn him numb again.  
  
The lighter sparked. Once, twice, thrice, but the flame never caught and he threw it away from himself in frustration.  
  
His right hand held his phone, his thumb positioned over the small green button. The signal to move that kept asking the same questions over and over again, but with alternating motivations.  
  
What are you waiting for? It’s not worth it, you know it’s not. Just take what you want and go.  
  
What are you waiting for? You’ve got nothing to lose, you know. Not anymore.  
  
He swore softly under his breath and only pressed the button when he felt the moisture on his cheeks yearning to turn to ice._  


* * *

  
The fourth time his phone started vibrating, Blaine reached out and ended the call, silencing the phone completely.  
  
He slouched down in his seat and tried to focus on the lecture, but he felt out of practice and as each word was droned out he felt himself drifting, like his mind had more important places to roam than the school of academic thought. It wandered to the empty seat to his right, to the flower on it replacing the persona usually sitting there. It felt like it was mocking him, just like the endless pages of sheet music lying on his coffee table next to his guitar were mocking him with a single, perfect melody but no words to go with it.  
  
A single, solemn melody that had led to silence and distance and the end of old things.  
  
He started out of his musings when a slim hand darted lightly into his vision and dropped a piece of paper onto the blank expanse of his notebook. He glanced at Cas out of the corner of his eyes, not used to seeing her sitting there, but she looked pointedly away, scribbling down something being said. At least one of them appeared to be listening to the lecture.  
  
He turned the note over in his hand and, by some strange pull, glanced over his shoulder to where Matt was sitting a couple rows back. The movement seemed to call Matt’s attention because he shot a quick glance at Blaine and, seeing him looking, stared fixedly back at the lecturer, the flat line of his mouth hiding expressions.  
  
Blaine sighed and, ignoring the would-be peace offering lying on the seat next to him, unraveled the note.  
  
 _Aren’t you going to answer that? Could be important._  
  
Blaine’s brow furrowed slightly and he glanced at her. Her golden locks fell slightly over her eyes as she glanced at the paper she’d put into his hand, observing her own handwriting carelessly before glancing up at him.  
  
The screen of his phone lit up as a response and he nudged it toward her, the unknown number flashing in earnest on the screen.  
  
She raised an eyebrow and reached over to remove the piece of paper from his grasp and write down a short, quick sentence on it before giving it back.  
  
 _Probably means it is important, then._  
  
Blaine paused, his brow furrowing, looking at the neat curve of Cas’s elegant cursive curiously as the screen of his phone died to black, a temporary phenomenon before it came to life again, its ring silenced, yet still trying to communicate a message, vague and unknown until it was accepted by the recipient. Blaine could feel his neighbors’ eyes on him as he stood and maneuvered his way from the desks, hard and immobile to block his passage, and walked quickly out of the lecture hall.  
  
“Hello?” he said into the phone, his heart racing suddenly because Cas was right. If you called the wrong number, you wouldn’t keep calling it. Which meant that any number of things could be happening. Someone could be hurt. Someone could be dead. Every manner of emergency ran through Blaine’s mind almost as though his life were threatening to flash before his eyes in the momentary pause on the other end that closed with a,  
  
“You know, the only unacceptable explanation for ignoring my calls would be if you were fucking someone, but given your cockblocking tendencies, I hardly think that’s likely.”  
  
Blaine started, visibly started in a way that made several passing freshmen pause to ascertain that he wasn’t having a stroke. They moved on far too quickly, though, because Blaine was fairly certain that this was exactly what a stroke felt like.  
  
“Kurt.”  
  
“Well spotted.”  
  
Blaine mouthed openly, absolutely certain that a fuse had been blown in his brain and he couldn’t even explain the reason behind it. Couldn’t find an explanation beyond the sheer presence that Kurt’s sudden nearness had and the decision that had been made over a week ago in the quiet darkness of a posh, upper class home.  
  
“How the hell did you get my number?” he asked when words finally had begun to have some sort of coherent meaning.  
  
Kurt laughed and it sounded strange. Different from the mock playfulness that he’d attempted to force into his voice when he first spoke. It was a laugh that seemed happy, but it was a happiness that was riding on the wave of . . . sadness? “I’m an excellent pickpocket, you know.”  
  
“Umm . . . okay . . . ?” Blaine stammered, utterly confounded. “I . . . why are you calling me?”  
  
“You should come play hooky with me.”  
  
“I have class—”  
  
“Well,  _obviously_  I do too. Technically. That’s why I’m suggesting we play hooky,” Kurt laughed, his voice partially cut off by a blow of wind. “Besides, I . . . I drove all this way, you know, and it would go against your wide-eyed, puppy-like disposition to keep me out in the cold.”  
  
What made Blaine pause just then wasn’t in the teasing words that Kurt set forth before him. Not even necessarily in their tone. There was that hesitation, barely noticeable, that struck Blaine in the face with an icy sensation, as though one of the snowballs being tossed about outside had passed through the glass of the window to hit him face-on. The indecision between telling the truth and playing the game.  
  
“Kurt, where are you?”  
  
“Outside your building.”  
  
Blaine’s brow furrowed and he took a cold of steps away from the door of the lecture hall, as though he feared being overheard. “Are you okay?”  
  
There was an intake of breath, almost obscured by the hardness of billowing air.  
  
“Of course.” Blaine searched for the lingering denial in his voice, but it was almost like trying to see the liquid water below a sheet of ice. It was there, surely, but one cannot quite see how thick the ice actually was. “Why wouldn’t I be?”  
  
Blaine didn’t answer. He stood in front of the wall of windows outside his class, gazing out at the falling November snow, just barely sticking to the ground, whose heat was no longer great enough to make a unit of liquid from the solid of the individual. “I don’t know . . . But you broke the pattern and it’s . . . disconcerting.” Because patterns are important and a year of Friday and Saturday nights was suddenly being broken for the fading of a Tuesday evening.  
  
“You broke it first,” Kurt accused quietly.  
  
Blaine pursed his lips, continuing to watch the glowing expanse of white outside. It was true, of course it was. But what did that fact do to meaning?  
  
“Give me a minute,” he said quickly and with a smooth, swift motion he hung up the phone and crossed back to the door of the lecture hall, easing himself inside and grabbing his bag and notebook with an odd inkling of haste, dropping everything into the messenger bag. Cas looked up at him with slight alarm and he vaguely wondered what his face looked like. Whether it was creased with worry, brows furrowed with anxiety.  
  
“What’s wrong?” she mouthed, but he shook his head, grateful they were sitting near the back of the lecture hall as he finished packing up, pausing only for a split second as he contemplated the flower he’d brought as an attempt to return things to a normalcy that couldn’t really exist anymore.  
  
He shook his head because he wasn’t even sure if he wanted anything like that back and so he grabbed the flower and straightened, turning to leave the lecture hall.  
  
He felt Matt look up at him then, his gaze not hidden, but laced with curiosity, with a slight crinkle of worry, a concern that couldn’t be covered up by all that had flooded them through the broken dam that had at one point been constructed between them.  
  
Blaine didn’t look in his direction, swinging the bag over his shoulder and hesitating for a split second before grabbing the flower off the seat next to his and leaving the room.  


* * *

  
_The apparition   of faces   in a crowd  
Petals   on a wet, black   bough._   


* * *

  
The most striking thing about Kurt Hummel was that he was always incredibly put together, but it was subtle in its own way and Blaine didn’t even notice it until it was gone. It had vanished once before, the night that they’d stumbled drunkenly from the bar to Blaine’s apartment, and Blaine could see it again in the figure hunched over on the cold, hard wood of the lone bench in the courtyard of his apartment building.  
  
The white of his T-shirt threatened to fade the boy away to the backdrop of snowfall, the paleness of his skin emphasized so that one might find it difficult to determine where the article of clothing ended and began. He was anchored to reality by the dark material of his jeans, fused seamlessly with his combat boots. Their dark color palate was dotted with specks of color, red dye #4, as though he’d been splattered with paint intended for an abstract painting. His hair looked like it had been dried by the ride over, unstyled and falling haphazardly over his eyes. He wasn’t wearing a coat, his arms bare and bloodless in the cold. He stared vacantly ahead, his lips parted ever so slightly where they leaned against the intricate intertwining of his two hands.  
  
Blaine’s shoes crunched lightly on the thin layer of snow and Kurt blinked, an oddly relieving sign of life. Something changed in his eyes when he first saw Blaine, the sunlight behind a blizzard. He smiled before he could think not to, but the expression was fleeting, unreliable as the weather. His gaze passed over Blaine as though on instinct, pausing on the piece of nature that Blaine had almost forgotten was clenched in his free hand.  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes, bracing himself for the cockiness, the comment that he was sure would be coming.  _Aww, Anderson, you’re bringing me flowers now? How fucking romantic._  
  
But Kurt didn’t say anything. He looked at the flower, its color stark and alive against the dreary landscape and he let out a breath, a sharp, hollow laugh, his eyes dropping form Blaine as he shook his head at the snow-covered tips of his leather boots. “God, so fucking  _stupid_ ,” he muttered to himself, sounding disgusted, almost betrayed, before he stood and started walking toward Blaine, but with the clear intention not of meeting him, but of walking  _past_  him.  
  
“Whoa, Hummel, what gives?” Blaine exclaimed, his brow furrowing and arm reaching out automatically to catch Kurt as he brushed past. The skin he caught was icy, felt numb and smooth, as though even goosebumps lacked the energy to raise themselves up into the cold.  
  
“Forget it, Anderson,” Kurt responded, but the words lacked the usual venom that they ought to have contained. He sounded tired, resigned. “Let go.”  
  
He probably should have, but the thought didn’t even occur. “Hold up, no way. You don’t get to call me out of class and then do a complete one-eighty. That’s not how it works.” His fingers twitched over the almost lifeless skin beneath his grip as he could feel the small patch connected to himself attempting to regain the temperature of a warm-blooded creature. “Come on, let’s go inside before you freeze to death.”  
  
Kurt stood where he was, his gaze directed at Blaine in firm resignation. “Christ, can’t you ever leave well enough alone?” he muttered, his voice distant.  
  
“Hey, you wanted me, now you’re stuck with me, kid,” Blaine quipped lightly. “And to answer your question, no, I can’t. Especially when it goes against my . . . what did you call it? My wide-eyed, puppy-like disposition?”  
  
Kurt laughed, the sound clear and untainted to go with the softly falling snow and allowed himself to be pulled inside the building. Inside the apartment, he stood in the entryway, gazing around it with his old sense of vague interest. His arms went up to curl around himself, as though sweeping the warmth of the room in toward his chest and he grimaced in discomfort as it started to affect his blood, infiltrating his body to restore circulation. Even absent for a short time, the sensation stung lightly, leaving a dull throb of pain to float through his body.  
  
Blaine dropped his bag on the couch and watched Kurt in concern for a moment, waiting for there to be some color to distinguish boy from the wet article of clothing clinging to his body. “Shit, kid, you got a death wish or something?” he said finally, walking back toward the door and stopping in front of Kurt, his hands rising up automatically to pass up and down the cool skin of Kurt’s forearms.  
  
Kurt stiffened slightly at the contact, his arms still wrapped around himself as though attempting to hold something deep inside. Blaine ignored the movement, rubbing over Kurt’s shoulders and upper arm vigorously until he could be sure that the being under his touch had a working pulse. When there was a semblance of spring arising out of the frozen tundra his movement slowed, but his hands didn’t remove their contact.  
  
“I guess I was in a bit of a hurry.”  
  
Blaine glanced up in slight confusion from where he’d gotten lost tracing patterns over Kurt’s bare arms, the answer given so removed in time from the question. Kurt was watching him curiously, his eyebrows knit tightly together. His gaze flickered down to Blaine’s lips almost thoughtfully and a moment later his shoulders seemed to relax and the slightest crinkles of a smile formed around his eyes. Blaine raised an eyebrow in response. “What, were you robbing a bank or something?”  
  
Kurt snorted and ducked his head in slight amusement. His hair was dry, but there were portions of it that were frozen into stiff spikes, which Blaine would have attributed to water and freezing temperatures and basic chemistry, but they weren’t exactly melting away. They had a sticky, red hue to them, not quite the consistency of paint of canvas, but rather that of a beverage.  
  
When Kurt looked up again some of his humor faded and he took in Blaine’s proximity with slightly parted lips and a gaze whose sudden warmth and darkness struck hard like the abrupt manifestation of a summer night. “Yeah, something like that.”  
  
“Damn, Hummel, don’t tell me you’re leading a whole slew of cops here.”  
  
“Yeah, sorry,” Kurt muttered, his gaze flickering with a mild indecisiveness between Blaine’s eyes and his lips. The contents of Blaine’s stomach were a whirlpool. “Should be here any minute.”  
  
“Well, then we should probably get you cleaned up and into something dry. Wouldn’t want to make a bad first impression.”  
  
Kurt’s nose was scrunched up with a sudden uncertainty, but Blaine gave him a reassuring smile, feeling strange in the new confidence he felt. “Maybe get that gunk out of your hair.”  
  
Kurt looked surprised and his hand dropped from the hard grip of a self-embrace that he’d gotten tangled in, only to rise and pass through his hair and come away stained slightly with red dye. He looked momentarily astounded to find it there, as though it had gotten lost somewhere in the events that had followed, thus losing its initial importance. Almost as soon as his eyes met with the color of his fingers, they clouded over and he stepped out of range of Blaine’s touch with a sharp inhale.  
  
“Yeah,” he said finally, but he was gone, the presence of his countenance in the present disappearing into the past. “Yeah, that would be good.”  
  
Blaine took a step automatically, his throat tight at the sight, but Kurt looked away and maintained the distance that he’d created. Blaine licked his lips and stilled his movement. “Bathroom’s through there,” he murmured, tilting his head to the side and when Kurt met his gaze there was something grateful, though fleeting, in the chilled color of his gaze. It was gone almost as soon as it had come and in the next instant Kurt had vanished past him, any contact absent.  


* * *

  
Blaine tried to occupy himself while the sound of running water echoed through his apartment, but he found it difficult to focus on anything. It wasn’t even the heated thought of the boy that was naked and showering just beyond his kitchen wall that distracted him. There was something far more than that, more than the feeling of raw emotion that could have filled the apartment like jungle humidity, stifling with need and want. It was the chill of apprehension that came with the strange notion of domesticity underlined with a question.  
  
The question of why someone with a distinct pattern would break it.  
  
“You have an ungodly amount of hair gel.”  
  
Blaine glanced up from what had to be the fifth activity that he’d embarked on with evident failure. He’d thus far attempted work for two different classes, emailed his advisor that he had to cancel their meeting because “something came up,” and texted Cas asking her to cover for him at work, during which he’d blatantly ignored the messages that he’d received from concerned parties in his economics lecture.  
  
“Hmm . . . I guess.”  
  
“It’s unnecessary,” Kurt shrugged, his hands in his pockets. His hair was clean and unstyled, as though no amount of force would bring him near Blaine’s hair gel, like it might rear up and attack his hair the way it seemed to Blaine’s. His white shirt was dry and he’d found the sweater that had been left for him. It clung to him well, clinging gracefully to the smooth curves of his body.  
  
Kurt raised an eyebrow when Blaine’s gaze met his own and Blaine realized with a slight intake of breath that he’d been staring. He shut his laptop quickly and stood as though sitting had become something taboo. “Do you, umm . . .” he muttered, running a hand through his hair and looking desperately around his kitchen. “Do you want something to eat?” He glanced over his shoulder to see Kurt just barely incline his head to the negative and, with a soft sway of his feet, like he didn’t quite know what was supposed to happen next, he turned away from Blaine, strolling around the apartment at a lazy pace. Blaine watched him, something inexplicably easy and domestic about the scene, the two things he would have never expected to see from the boy that made sexual jokes like he was talking about the weather. Kurt ran a hand along the spines of Blaine’s books, the touch feather-light and delicate, but no novel made the cut and slowly his hand fell and he stepped away from the shelves to settle himself silently on Blaine’s window seat.  
  
He looked like a painting, the boy in a thick sweater sitting at the window, watching the snow fall in the darkness.  
  
He made Blaine wonder how much of him was the boy in the leather jacket and how much retained the image from his driver’s license. And what exactly it was that dictated the boy that would be present at a given moment in time.  
  
“That seat is such a waste, if you ask me.”  
  
Kurt jumped, his eyes flying from the window to the sudden appearance of Blaine before him and to the steaming mug of coffee being held out to him. The beverage seemed to confuse him, for he appeared almost captivated before he took it and zipped delicately. Blaine grinned at this and sat on the opposite end of the window seat, his posture mimicking Kurt’s, who quickly drew his legs toward himself. “You really shouldn’t be allowed to have a window seat unless there’s a truly spectacular view outside and I doubt there’s anywhere in Ohio that satisfies such a requirement. But like . . . New York, now there’s a view. Or anywhere in Europe, really. I have a friend with family in Paris, and his aunt wants to leave him her apartment when she passes and just . . . God, the view. It doesn’t even compare.”  
  
Kurt, who had smiled slightly over the rich aroma of coffee that surrounded their little alcove, turned away from the window with his brow scrunched up in thought, as though Blaine’s presence worked only to befuddle him. Blaine decided that he liked that look on him. The focused one, the one that made him seem vastly more human than cocky confidence ever could.  
  
“Why are you telling me this?” Kurt asked slowly.  
  
Blaine shrugged. “Just making small talk.” Kurt looked for a moment as though the concept were completely foreign to him, as though people no longer spoke without ulterior motives. “We can talk about why you’re here if you’d prefer.”  
  
“Needed a place to crash.”  
  
“What, here?”  
  
“Is that so surprising?” Kurt muttered under his breath, low and suddenly harsh.  
  
“Did something happen?”  
  
Kurt stared at the darkness beyond the window, his face set in hard lines like a Picasso painting. His hand rose automatically toward his face, his eyes glossing over slowly, like he was being pulled gently into the past. His thumb moved over his lips, hypnotizing Blaine in an odd way as it traced the fullness of his bottom lip, learning it like a blind man and almost trying to . . . ascertain a change.  
  
The smallest of sounds escaped Blaine like a sigh and it seemed to shake Kurt. He blinked and shook his head, wiping his hand across his lips in a motion of disgust. “It’s . . .” he muttered, looking distressed and frustrated, his gaze never passing to Blaine. “God, it’s actually  _nothing_ , I don’t know why I . . .” He stopped. “It doesn’t matter.”  
  
Blaine’s eyes widened. He recognized it then. The look, the expression that had in essence set things in motion and he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t seen it for what it was before. The look that was indicative of an emotional parasite, the dangerous combination of sadness and hatred.  
  
“It does matter,” he said quietly, willing the boy to look at him. “You . . . you matter.”  
  
Kurt’s head turned so fast that he cringed in pain and his hand flew up to knead the muscle at the back of his neck as he stared at Blaine incredulously, as though he didn’t believe him. His mouth opened several times before closing without a word, all the responses he wanted to utter deemed too inadequate to be put into words. “You . . . I don’t . . . how are you . . .” he muttered to himself before clamping his mouth shut and looking back out the window at the lights of Columbus twinkling meekly though the snowfall.  
  
“You remind me of my father,” he said eventually, a smile foreshadowed in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes.  
  
“The elusive Burt Hummel?” Blaine questioned lightly. “How so?”  
  
“I don’t know . . . you’re both . . .” Kurt licked his lips thoughtfully, “You’re both safe.”  
  
Blaine’s brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
  
Kurt chuckled. “Don’t get your balls in a twist, Anderson. It’s not an insult.”  
  
Blaine was about to reply when Kurt yawned widely, his back arching slightly into the motion and his tongue at the roof of his mouth, the metal ball piercing through it glittering dimly in the lamplight. Blaine fell silent, watching the boy as he tucked his long legs under his body and played absentmindedly with the rim of his mug. It was a strange contrast from the scene earlier, in the falling light of the evening, the black and white image fading into the picture of warmth. Blaine found it difficult to wrap his mind around it, but there it was. The boy that looked like he’d finally left his mask at the door and, for some reason, it seemed to remind Blaine of how tired he was.  
  
“I’m assuming you want to spend the night?” he said, standing up after a couple of moments of silence.  
  
Kurt’s eyes flickered. “Yeah.”  
  
Blaine nodded. “And you’re sure you’re not leading any cops here?”  
  
Kurt laughed softly, twisting his body to look at Blaine as he walked toward his bedroom door. For a moment before answering, “Positive,” he looked like he was contemplating something, like there was a choice wrestling in his mind, but eventually his eyes softened sadly and his thoughts remained unspoken. Blaine nodded, his heart pounding with indecision, a sudden pull of heartstrings in two opposite directions, but they both seemed to give in to a failure of some semblance of courage and he disappeared into his room.  
  
He didn’t look to see whether the door he pushed closed actually did so fully.  
  
Kurt watched it with his bottom lip between his teeth, trying to read answers into the precise measurement of distance between the frame and the door.  


* * *

  
_He thought that maybe, just maybe, if he acted, if he took that quick step, he could retain the broken pieces. That if he let the newfound feeling explode within him, he could still carry around the pieces of it, broken but together making up a whole._   


* * *

  
The alarm clock beside the bed read 12:23 am when the door creaked open, the light from the living room casting a thin beam of illumination that crossed the floor and crept up the side of Blaine’s bed. Blaine had been lying awake, suspended in limbo and staring at the ceiling for . . . what. It must have been an hour at least. As movement swept through the otherwise still apartment he blinked and moved, propping himself up on his elbows to look toward the doorway.  
  
The figure at the door paused, his face shrouded in shadow so that Blaine couldn’t see if he was being looked at. He murmured Kurt’s name as a question, but the inquiry didn’t ask  _who_. It asked  _what_  and  _why_  and  _is everything okay_? Kurt moved and his head inclined slightly to look carefully at the door, his profile prominent like the old art of miniatures that one would carry around on their persons like a reminder. He inhaled slowly and closed the door, flooding the room in a darkness that was punctured only by the dull red glow of the digits on the alarm clock.  
  
“Are you awake?” Kurt murmured softly, the question hanging on the air for the brief necessity of breaking a silence that would still flood back to its original state.  
  
Kurt’s footsteps were muffled by the carpet and Blaine strained to see him as he passed just beyond the dull red glow.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
The light that went missing the moment before erased his vision and he squinted, but it was almost entirely unhelpful.  
  
“What’s going on?”  
  
He could see Kurt when he felt him, the light of the alarm clock like a sunburn, the dip of the bed as a jean-clad knee pressed into it drawing their bodies closer.  
  
He just had time to mutter Kurt’s name when he felt the contact, the delicate press of Kurt’s lips against his own in the darkness. It was warm and unexpectedly gentle and shouldn’t have startled Blaine, but even as his eyes closed and he made to press back without the old weight on his shoulders, he let out a soft noise of surprise and Kurt pulled away ever so slightly, just enough for there to be a back of air between them for their breaths to intermingle like the creation of storm fronts. The brush of Kurt’s bangs over Blaine’s forehead tickled all the way down to Blaine’s toes.  
  
“Kurt—”  
  
“God, I want you,” Kurt murmured, his breath close and warm and Blaine almost thought he was being kissed again, but it was just that breath of air, hot with foreshadowing, against his lips. It was like a final admission, real and mature from all the years it had spent locked away. “Shit, I want you so bad.”  
  
“You want to forget,” Blaine whispered back, prompted by experience.  
  
Kurt shook his head, his bangs sweeping across Blaine’s forehead as though he could brush away such thoughts. A moment later his hand was gripping the base of Blaine’s neck, the same place he’d fingerprinted when Blaine was trying to prove his own rebelliousness. He pressed their foreheads together to prove just how many of his thoughts were being articulated.  
  
“I want it to mean something.”  
  
“What happened?”  
  
The insistent sweep of bangs over skin, brushing aside dirt and dust and doubt. “Right now. This moment, Blaine, I . . .”  
  
There was a stutter to Blaine’s pulse and he closed his eyes, his hand scrambling, its position mimicking Kurt’s to hold him close as something ran away from him. The sound of his own name, rolled over so delicately and desperately, leaving imprints of who he might be on his own lips, like the opening of a closed door.  
  
“Say it again.”  
  
"What?"  
  
"My name."  
  
There was a stir of air near Blaine’s eyes, the fans of Kurt’s eyelashes as he blinked, inhaling from the reserve patch of air between them. He had barely complied, the B of Blaine’s name just barely falling of the precipice of speech when Blaine inclined his head, the split second during which the air had vanished between them leaving him yearning for it, yearning for more than what was present and so he took it, stripped off all hesitation in the heat of the thick air surrounding them.  
  
Kurt’s lips slid smoothly against his, ever so slightly chapped from his long exposure to the cold winter weather. He tightened his grip on Blaine’s curls, his fingernails scratching lightly into the back of Blaine’s neck as he attempted to pull them closer. He grunted softly, the sound low in his throat. His lips parted and he licked over the seam of Blaine’s mouth, making Blaine gasp, desperate for air that wasn’t available anywhere but within Kurt.  
  
A groan escaped him when their tongues brushed together, intertwining and sliding wetly until their saliva produced a purely unique substance that couldn’t be separated into its two parts. The noise had been building in the pit of his stomach, the swirl of blood and tingling nerves that was slowly growing until it separated, traveling upward to escape in the form of uncontrollable sound, downward as the flood of arousal.  
  
They tasted the same in a heady manner, the flavor of Blaine’s coffee lingering behind both their essences, but never overpowering the strong, unobscured taste of Kurt, free of tobacco and alcohol.  
  
Kurt licked a stripe across the roof of Blaine’s mouth and Blaine’s tongue arched up at the contact and, as though it were a hint of things to come, Kurt moved, his eyes closed. He pressed a hand into Blaine’s shoulder and made the smallest of noises, more like a breath that was being chased by desperate sound, when the palm of his hand hit bare shoulder, Blaine’s muscles flexing beneath Kurt’s life line. He braced himself against Blaine’s solid form as he swung his leg over Blaine’s body, the whole of his weight dipping the bed downward. His knees gripped Blaine’s hips as he curled his tongue around Blaine’s and pulled it into his mouth, encompassing it in a tight heat, distinct and explosive within the wet cavern of his mouth. They both groaned loudly as Kurt sucked on Blaine’s tongue, the noises mingling like harsh breaths they struggled for to keep their hearts from exploding.  
  
Blaine sat up, taking the weight off his arm as he allowed his hands to skim over the smooth porcelain of Kurt’s skin. He broke away when Kurt’s lungs didn’t provide him with enough sustenance and he inhaled brokenly against the corner of Kurt’s lips. One of Blaine’s hands twirled the short strands of hair at the base of Kurt’s neck around his fingers, pulling his head back to expose the smooth, long line of Kurt’s neck. Kurt moaned hotly, the tendons of his neck flexing. The movement caught the breath from escaping Blaine’s throat as his other hand skimmed over the softness of the cashmere sweater clinging delicately to Kurt’s shoulders, to the surprisingly defined muscle of Kurt’s arms.  
  
Blaine placed a kiss, wet and open mouthed along the firm bone of Kurt’s jaw as his hand danced toward buttons, pulling them out of their holes and attempting to blindly pull the cardigan off with one hand. Kurt’s hand dropped from the back of Blaine’s neck to help free himself from the unnatural warmth of the article, their hands tangling as they both gripped the fabric of Kurt’s T-shirt to pull it over his head, breaking them apart for a split second before Blaine dived in again, planting a row of sloppy kisses down Kurt’s neck, pausing for a moment to linger over Kurt’s Adam’s apple. The vibrations of Kurt’s desperate moan, the exhalation of Blaine’s name shivering over Blaine’s tongue and reverberating throughout his entire body. He was overtaken with headiness and heat flashes as the motion of his tongue arched Kurt’s back, his hips grinding down into Blaine’s.  
  
The stimulation, the pressure and the humidity from all sides clenched against Blaine’s heart as it pounded without regard for the lack of blood in his head. The emotion was over powering, the ever-gripping repetition of need and want and more and Kurt.  
  
He licked over a collarbone and tasted the salt of sweat, but also the sharpness that was all Kurt, the taste of pale skin unnaturally flush with arousal and he gripped the base of Kurt’s spine, that sensitive valley surrounded by mountains from which the view was sure to be spectacular. Kurt groaned out his name like prayer and ground down hard, his arousal evident even through the thick material of jeans.  
  
The slow grind, evident of all that was needed in the moment, started the build of pressure, the tightening and tingling of heat.  
  
“Pants,” Blaine grunted over the perfect valley at Kurt’s collar.  
  
“Wh—nngh,  _Christ_ , what?”  
  
“Get rid of them,” Blaine gasped, his fingers dipping just below the waistband of the article of clothing in question.  
  
“Oh, God yes,” Kurt moaned and his hands scrambled down from their tight, desperately grounding grip on Blaine’s arms to fiddle with the buttons of his jeans. He let out a small noise of frustration and almost fell off of Blaine onto the other side of the bed, his feet in the air as he lost all semblance of grace in the effort to peel the skin-tight material from himself. Despite the heat of the moment Blaine couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up inside of him, feeling freedom and happiness for the first time in a long time. He pulled off his own sweatpants and underwear easily and rolled over to straddle Kurt’s hips before the boy could recover from the battle waged with his wardrobe.  
  
“You should really re-think your fashion choices,” he laughed, a hand brushing Kurt’s hair away from his forehead as the other moved gracefully along Kurt’s jaw, slowing the desperation to a deep simmer, the rising of steam from a kettle just before the boil. In the dim light of the alarm clock whose time didn’t matter, in the pale glow of moonlight reflecting off the newly-fallen snow on the window ledge, Blaine looked down at Kurt, partially shrouded in darkness but open, his chest heaving desperately for air that couldn’t be consumed fast enough, his lips parted and glistening. Always so closed off and yet lying beneath Blaine like an open book whose first line read, “It’s all worth it, I promise you.”  
  
“Why did you stop?” Kurt whispered because it was all he could do, his voice rough and needy and on the verge of wreckage.  
  
Blaine smiled without wondering if it could be seen and leaned his head down for a gentle kiss, slow and open, his body lowering and his hips rolling until a spark ran through him and Kurt gasped in his mouth, his body arching upward into the perfect alignment of their cocks, slick with precome yet holding onto the friction that made them both buck uncontrollably, the pressure in their spines building with a tingle and a heat that grew out of the electricity shooting through their nerves and the fire burning through their veins. Their chests pressed together, heart on either side, and Kurt’s arms wrapped around Blaine’s neck to pull him closer so that they would melt into each other and Kurt and Blaine would be no more, not under the pressure of KurtandBlaine.  
  
They rocked, their cocks sliding perfectly together, their tongues engaged in an intricate dance within the warmth of their mouths until the rising balloon within their bodies burst, its pressure burst and where they had been floating they fell, hard and fast and explosively. Their bodies stiffened and rocked through waves of pleasure as they came together, their mouths wrenching apart for Blaine to gasp into the crook of Kurt’s neck and for Kurt to moan out Blaine’s name repeatedly into Blaine’s ear until the sound of it would echo there always.  
  
Shocks of electricity rode over them until Blaine collapsed onto Kurt, his limbs laden and heavy, their bodies fused together by the come mixed perfectly over their chests, gasping from exertion and of the final realization of all that had been hanging between them.  
  
When the room stopped spinning and his breaths because even, Blaine rolled onto his side, onto the mattress. His hand passed, hovered over Kurt’s chest, just over the sticky wetness, simply breathing and marveling at the rise and fall of Kurt’s chest.  
  
“Can I stay?” Kurt murmured, his voice rough and wasted, turning his head and looking at Blaine through dark eyes drowning in emotion that couldn’t be read without further light.  
  
Its presence was enough and Blaine raised his hand to press gently along Kurt’s jaw, thumb skimming over Kurt’s cheekbone in a silent answer to accompany the press of his forehead and the close of his eyes, the comfort and the warmth as he pulled his blanket over them.  
  
 _Of course_.  


* * *

  
When Blaine stirred out of the slumbers of sleep the next morning, the space beside him carried the memory of weight, but nothing more than the impression of a boy that wasn’t there.  
  



	11. Chapter 11

_And would it have been worth it, after all,  
Would it have been worth while,  
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,  
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—  
And this, and so much more?_  
  
What woke Blaine the first time was the cold, and in defense against it he rolled onto his side, falling into the hollow of sheets and mattress formed by the absence of a once present body.  
  
He felt a breeze tickling his eyelids and he shivered, pulling his comforter tighter around himself. In his scrambling to find heat he found that hollow, the indentation of a body, some warmth still lingering. Behind the darkness of his closed eyes, his mind seemed to awaken, confusion and doubt bringing it to life in the dim light of the early morning.  
  
Had he dreamt it? How much, how long? How long had he been hovering in a dream world masquerading as reality? How long could he still keep his eyes closed to hold onto it?  
  
With a groan of protest he moved the arm that had fallen into the cool, empty space beside him and raised it to his eyes, the pressure against them oddly uplifting and he rolled onto his back again, forcing his eyes open to greet the dull grey of his ceiling, the light pouring in from the outside just barely giving color, shrouding the world in the colorlessness of life before the sun followed through on its threat to rise.  
  
It was early, so early in the morning that the whole world was still asleep and Blaine wondered vaguely why it was that he had awoken. The empty space in the bed ought not to have been something so profound as to elicit the change in consciousness.  
  
The thought struck him painfully, like a pinprick in the heart.  
  
There were shadows on the ceiling, a darker grey barely noticeable until stirred into movement, lazily and slowly before falling back into quiet. Blaine’s brow furrowed, his breath exhaling slowly and he rolled onto his side to look toward the window.  
  
He wasn’t sure if the sight of the boy lounging by the open window worked to shatter the dream or to shroud reality, but he broke out into a smile that wanted to banish the cold and he leaned his head against his arm, watching the boy and hovering in that odd space of contentment, where emotions weren’t exploding, but were so comfortable that they engulfed like an eternal embrace.  
  
Smoke curled from the tip of the lit cigarette, out the open window, the outside world drawing out smolder and heat and replacing it with chill, the room shrinking from sanctuary to ice box. Long and nimble fingers were still, the cigarette balanced precariously, as though hiding among them. Kurt half sat on the window ledge, his head leaning against the glass of the open window, his eyes staring four floors down at the stillness of the street. His face was quiet, not peaceful or even emotional but shrouded in a still somberness, almost sadness as he watched the eastern sky and waited for color to seep into the world again. His hair swayed lightly in the breeze, the rays of sunlight that were starting to break over the horizon illuminating the loose strands in the lightest of molten golds.  
  
He was wearing boxer briefs, the ones that had been so carelessly discarded the night before and his skin was ghostly pale under the early morning light. When he exhaled the chill of his breath curled intricately around the clouds of smoke that floated away from him.  
  
He shivered slightly and the movement seemed to bring Blaine back to reality.  
  
“Are you crazy?” he muttered.  
  
Kurt blinked, that graceful transition from whatever was occurring in the expanse of his mind and he glanced back at Blaine, a thin eyebrow raised questioningly.  
  
“It’s freezing,” Blaine said pointedly, tilting his head with a warm smile. He was strangely content, wrapped up in a comforter and looking at a boy smoking at his windowsill.  
  
Kurt swallowed, something wary flickering in his expression. “Didn’t want to stink up your apartment,” he replied quietly, flicking the end of the cigarette out the window.  
  
“How considerate,” Blaine drawled softly and Kurt laughed, glancing out onto the fallen snow, his expression soft but unreadable. “Kurt, you’re insane. Close the damn window and come here.”  
  
Kurt looked at him, licking his lips thoughtfully before glancing at the horizon, barely visible between the buildings of Columbus, as though he were looking for answers to a question that he’d been wondering about since he’d awoken. He took a deep breath and stood, his toes curling along the cool wood of the floor, his arm muscles flexing into definition as he pulled the window closed. The soft sound of his footsteps approached the bed, pausing at the edge. Blaine rolled onto his back to look up at Kurt more easily. The boy just stopped and looked down at Blaine, his height and angle making him seem as though he ought to be towering over the bed, but for the expression on his face, the anxiously drawn brows and the slight quiver of hesitation, like he was battling the instinct to fly.  
  
“You look worried,” Blaine observed and Kurt frowned, as though displeased by the assessment. “Don’t know why. I think last night is fairly decent evidence that I don’t bite.”  
  
Kurt exhaled and closed his eyes momentarily. When he opened them he smirked lightly, an old shadow of the easy-going boy that Blaine had first come to know. “Shame. What if I’m into that?”  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes and lifted the comforter slightly. “Well, I _suppose_ I can make an exception.”  
  
Kurt chuckled and, shoulders relaxing, he eased himself down and under, reveling in the warmth cast upon him by the presence of calm heat. He lay on his side, the comforter a cocoon, his bottom lip caving under the pressure of his teeth as he silently observed Blaine.  
  
“What were you thinking about?” Blaine murmured, a hand moving invisibly under the blanket with the tips of his fingers skimming over skin, icy to the touch but soft as silk.  
  
Kurt made a face at the inquiry, his eyes scanning Blaine’s before he flipped lightly onto his back and directed them at the ceiling. The room swam in silence as Kurt appeared to contemplate his answer and Blaine observed the smooth curve of his profile, the blue-grey flicker of his eyes. The way he would lie perfectly still until the soft brush of Blaine’s ever wandering fingertips tickled over the soft flesh of his inner elbow, causing a deep inhalation of forced control.  
  
“It’s almost morning,” Kurt said finally, sounding regretful.  
  
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”  
  
“Day . . . changes everything.”  
  
Blaine pursed his lips in confusion, well versed with the concept that dawn would bring a better day, but never the opposite notion. He realized then that he had never seen Kurt when it wasn’t night, when there wasn’t some veil of darkness between them.  
  
“You’re not about to tell me you’re a vampire or something, are you?”  
  
Kurt’s head twitched slightly at the statement and he glanced at Blaine, laughing loudly at the mockingly eager grin that was flashed at him. “Ha, no. No, I guess . . . maybe more of a Cinderella figure.”  
  
“I never quite pictured you to be the Disney princess type.”  
  
“But I came across as an Edward Cullen? I feel like I should reevaluate my life choices.”  
  
Blaine laughed, his hand falling away from Kurt’s as he too fell onto his back, the position balancing the rock of laughter and amusement and intimacy. “No, no,” he chuckled. “None of that Twilight nonsense. Those vampires are far too much bark and not enough bite. I’m thinking more of the classics. Bram Stoker’s vampires, for instance.”  
  
A moment after he spoke there was a shift of movement next to him, but it didn’t manifest itself into spoken word. He waited, breathing deeply, for some sort of response, but when none came he turned his head. Kurt watched him in silence, his gaze dark and thoughtful as he simply looked, his eyes unblinking, his mouth opened slightly to reveal his tongue poking absentmindedly at his canines.  
  
“What?” Blaine asked, but his voice was hoarse, his throat scratchy and it came out as a rough grunt.  
  
This seemed to amuse Kurt, for his expression molded into a wicked smile, that one that Blaine knew so well. “Well, well . . . And here I thought you were implying that _I_ was the one with the biting kink, Anderson.”  
  
Blaine inhaled, feeling peace rumbling away under the pounding of the drumbeats of his waking heart. Kurt eyed him thoughtfully, his lips curved up, the lightest indent of a dimple threatening to form on his right cheek.  
  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he returned, his voice low and Kurt grinned slyly, the heat of his eyes flaming like the flash of a fire that he was trying to infect Blaine with.  
  
“Oh?” he murmured, his eyes glossing down to Blaine’s lips as he wet his own. Blaine held his breath as Kurt leaned in, the air before him a strange mingling of currents as Kurt’s body heat seeped in between them even as his inhale drew all warmth away.  
  
He closed his eyes automatically, his lips parting and he prepared himself for that contact, that initial electrocution, and he felt the beginning of feeling bubbling in his stomach. Millimeters away, Kurt exhaled over Blaine’s lips and ducked to the side at the last second, his cheek brushing against Blaine’s as his body moved slightly over, the sheets tangling between their bodies as the chill of the room breezed against Blaine’s bare skin.  
  
Blaine gasped in shock as the lips that should have been against his own brushed over his earlobe. The curve of Kurt’s smirk was clear against Blaine’s cheek. He let out a chuckle, a low and rough rumble and without warning Blaine felt the sharp bite of teeth along his earlobe, hard and determined.  
  
The noise that escaped him was startling, the sensation of hardness encompassing the sensitive flesh shooting a spark through Blaine’s body, lighting an unexplored fire that flooded him so fast that his hips twitched underneath Kurt. He could feel the vibrations of Kurt’s laugh shaking him as his tongue flicked over the lightly throbbing flesh that had just seconds before been between his teeth.  
  
“Care to reassess your previous statement, Mr. Anderson?” Kurt whispered, his voice filled with a dangerous heat. He was right up against Blaine’s ear, each word felt as well as spoken, one arm braced against the headboard behind Blaine, the other pressed flat to the center of Blaine’s chest, rising and falling with each increasingly labored breath.  
  
Blaine couldn’t find the words and he sucked in another breath as the hand on his chest curled, blunt nails scratching lightly against the hair there. Kurt pushed gently, angling his head to lick a long stripe down the arteries of Blaine’s neck, his body sliding slowly down Blaine’s, the slow drag of the material covering him torturous over the sensitive flesh of Blaine’s semi-hard cock, causing him to let out a low moan, his head flying back onto the pillows, trying to find some sense of escape even though it was the farthest possible thing that he could have wished to accomplish.  
  
He could suddenly feel the boy on top of him, could feel him from all ends, an all-encompassing presence, his tongue marking the exposed curve of Blaine’s neck, teeth scraping teasingly over one pressure point as his cock, hard within the confines of those damn boxer briefs, dragged along Blaine’s stomach until Kurt was grinding down on that other pressure point, each place of contact sparking Blaine’s blood to a boil, each spark forcing an embarrassing whine out of him.  
  
The pressure of Kurt’s tongue massaged at him and his head ached back, straining for more as Kurt left a trail of fire at each point that his tongue touched, like sparks flowing along a path of gunpowder. It made his toes curl and his stomach wring as Kurt bit down lightly on his collarbone, his body forcing Blaine’s legs apart as he slid down between them, his tongue working its way lower.  
  
It was never something he thought would turn him on, but when Kurt’s tongue passed over his nipple, when his teeth gripped it gently and tugged, something exploded behind Blaine’s eyes and he bucked up under Kurt, groaning loudly, wanting more. God, so much more of that feeling that was taking control of every one of his senses. He could feel the blood pulsing in between his legs, could feel it in the sensitive nerves encompassed by Kurt’s mouth as he flicked his tongue hard against Blaine’s nipple, like a switch that turned on the rapid flow of sensation that flooded Blaine with feeling.  
  
Only when both of Blaine’s nipples were well taken care of and he was writhing with need beneath Kurt did the boy pull back, sitting back on his haunches between Blaine’s legs and surveyed his work with satisfaction. The color of his eyes in the rising sun outside was breathtaking, his pupils dilated, but the shade of blue rimming them dark and beautiful. It beat Blaine’s heart until he couldn’t take the build of pressure and he tried to sit up, tried to pull the other boy’s mouth toward him to collide them together.  
  
Kurt grinned and pressed Blaine back down, stretching his arm before him as he slid backward, scraping his entire body over the throbbing length of Blaine’s cock.  
  
“Fuck, Kurt,” Blaine gasped, a hand on his thigh countering the reaction that flashed through his muscles as Kurt ducked down and licked a long, wet trail down the center of Blaine’s chest, dipping into his belly button and stopping just above the head of Blaine’s cock.  
  
The breath that Blaine sucked in from shock was like a leaf on the breeze, but Kurt lifted up, bypassing cock to press a gentle kiss to the inside of Blaine’s thigh.  
  
“Kurt,” Blaine murmured, his voice desperate. His toes tingled and he ached and Kurt lingered, almost smiling but with lips a little too dark and swollen for it, cheeks a little too flushed.  
  
Kurt hummed against his skin and moved until he was perched over Blaine and each breath he exhaled over the tip was torturous. “What do you want?” he whispered, lifting his head away to avoid contact as Blaine groaned and thrust his hips up in search of relief. Kurt looked at him with hooded eyes, his eyelashes long and his bottom lip glistening with a streak of precome from when he hadn’t escaped quite as quickly as he ought to have. “Tell me what you want.”  
  
“Stop teasing and—oh, _God_ ,” Blaine moaned when Kurt didn’t wait for an answer, instead flicking his tongue hard against the head of Blaine’s cock.  
  
“Not God, but I’m flattered,” Kurt laughed and before Blaine could compose a witty retort, Kurt sunk his mouth down over him and Blaine’s world turned incoherent. All that he could process was the tight, wet cavity of Kurt’s mouth as he took him in carefully. Blaine could feel his cheeks hollowing and his tongue swirling around the length of his cock and he groaned, a swear and a prayer and Kurt’s name reigning somewhere within the sound that was wrenched out of him.  
  
Kurt took him all the way in before tightening his lips around him and pulling off, the friction resisting, the sudden threat of an explosion. Kurt eased off him with a pop before sinking his mouth down again, his tongue swirling expertly, as though he wished to taste and lick the very essence of Blaine off and the thought flooded Blaine’s balls with heat. He thrust up and despite the warm hand on his thighs he pushed them both upward.  
  
Kurt’s throat constricted as he grunted in surprise, throat vibrating all around Blaine and through his entire body and instead of pulling away he relaxed his throat and took Blaine in further, his eyes closing until he could breath in only Blaine’s scent and Blaine’s cock hit the back of Kurt’s throat.  
  
Blaine gasped as Kurt swallowed, his body arching. With every small movement Blaine could feel it building, the tightness and the heat and the pressure and he threw his head back, one hand threading through Kurt’s hair, barely able to focus on just how _wonderful_ the texture was. His other hand scrambled for purchase among the sheets, but he could feel the edge of the cliff crumbling beneath his feet with every hum of pleasure, every movement that met his own, every hard deliberate drag of Kurt’s tongue along the vein on the underside of his cock. The heat swirled and flowed and he tried not to thrust up but his body was no longer under his control. There was just Kurt and the stretch of his mouth and the shadows of his eyelashes.  
  
He gasped out the name as a warning to the fall, but Kurt didn’t pull away. He reached down and took Blaine’s balls into his hand, massaging them as his tongue swiped once, twice and with a final erratic thrust and swallow he took Blaine as he lost it, his body stiffening under the weight of relief and pleasure, his hips arching up off the mattress as he came. Kurt grunted, the noise low, and as shock waves surged through Blaine, his hand slipped and he gripped the soft flesh of Blaine’s ass and lifted him further, holding him closer as Blaine shook through like an earthquake, Kurt swallowing around him.  
  
Blaine’s brain went blank and when the waves pounding through his body subsided and he collapsed, shaking, onto the mattress, the only thing he registered was the faint pop of Kurt finally pulling away and with a grunt his hand fell down off of Kurt’s hair and onto the back of his neck, tugging.  
  
“C’mere,” he grunted, spent and wrecked and Kurt fell forward, curling onto his side and finally allowing Blaine to kiss him, his tongue swiping into Kurt’s mouth in slow, lazy motions, tasting himself mixed in with Kurt, the boldness of flavor intoxicating. Kurt moaned with pleasure as Blaine licked his mouth clean, one hand smoothing down Kurt’s side to pass over his boxer-clad ass. He squeezed lightly, lazily and Kurt gasped into his mouth, pressing in closer until his erection was pressed into Blaine’s thigh. He ground against Blaine, his hand threading into Blaine’s hair and pulling him closer.  
  
Blaine was barely recovering, just allowing himself to be kissed hungrily, but his hand moved almost on instinct, fingers ducking underneath the band of Kurt’s underwear and feeling their way until they reached the front of Kurt’s body, curling around Kurt’s hard cock.  
  
The boy gasped as Blaine pushed the cotton of his underwear away and ran his hand lightly over his cock, gentle and marveling at the weight. He pumped in long, slow strokes, the movements drawing Kurt out as he himself regained a sense of consciousness. He twisted his wrist, the angle he had slightly awkward, but steady and torturous until Kurt had to pull out of the kiss to gasp against Blaine’s mouth, his limbs quivering with the strain of control. Blaine looked at him as his head flew back and he tried to gain the air that was rapidly being depleted from his lungs.  
  
He realized then, as his post-orgasmic haze seemed to sharpen, just how beautiful Kurt was and the thought clenched through his body, tightening his grip and increasing the speed up his pumps. Because Kurt had always been attractive, even when Blaine had hated him with every fiber of his being, but now it was more than that, more than the curtain of forbidden lust and Blaine drew it out of him until each movement of his wrist, each motion of his thumb over the head of Kurt’s cock flushed his cheeks and threw his head back, stretching his throat muscles as his gasps turned into moans.  
  
“Shit. _Shit_ , And— _Blaine_ , God!”  
  
There it was again, that ever-elusive first name as Kurt’s hands scrambled and his toes curled, a lack of control seeping through.  
  
“Come on . . .” Blaine whispered against his mouth, biting down easily on Kurt’s bottom lip. “Let go.”  
  
Kurt gasped and with a groan he clashed their mouths back together, his tongue plundering Blaine’s mouth sloppily for mere moments before a final thrust of his hips into the tight heat of Blaine’s hand pushed him over the edge and his head flew back against the pillows, his muscles quivering and shaking as his hips thrust erratically forward and his come spilled out over Blaine’s hand. The line of his neck was impossibly long as his chest heaved and whatever stars were bursting behind the darkness of his closed eyes echoed throughout his entire body.  
  
Beautiful like a firework display, even as he collapsed, long and pliant, next to Blaine.  


* * *

  
The second time Blaine awoke, it was to the sound of his alarm clock. He tried to move with a groan, his hand scrambling to find his clock without opening his eyes, but there was a body laid out heavily over his own, face buried in his shoulder, one hand lying with its palm in the center of Blaine’s chest. Their legs tangled in a way that almost confused as to where he ended and Kurt began.  
  
He was warm and comfortable like an insulating blanket, his hand especially, and Blaine tried to resist the urge to ignore his alarm and simply roll onto his side and curl into the boy, wrapping him up in his arms in case he tried to run later.  
  
But the alarm blared and shook the moment and so he scrambled, hand flopping about uselessly on the bedside table until it collided with the device in question, and he grunted out a noise of success before hitting the snooze button hard. The action, however, didn’t necessarily achieve its intended result, for instead of blissfully silencing the room, the noise changed from a siren-like blare to the doorbell, a ring reminiscent of the ring of an early telephone, shrill and warbling, and Blaine flopped back down onto the bed in defeat, the realization that he would actually have to move hitting him painfully.  
  
“No, don’t,” Kurt mumbled sleepily when Blaine attempted to ease out of the bed, throwing a leg and an arm around his body and burrowing his face further into the crook of Blaine’s neck. Blaine let out a shaky exhale, like a laugh, because it was like that morning when his brain had churned out the distant idea of him being that pillow that Kurt clung to as he slept.  
  
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he murmured, trying to move out of the embrace and his own desire to remain immobile like this forever.  
  
Kurt grunted and muttered something indiscernible (though Blaine thought he caught the word “illusion” in there) against the skin of Blaine’s shoulder.  
  
“What?”  
  
Kurt sighed and released him then, stealing his pillow when he’d risen and wrapping his arms around it instead. Blaine smiled fondly down at him, ran a hand through his hair and walked out of the room while simultaneously trying to don a pair of flannel pajama bottoms.  
  
“All right, I’m coming!” he yelled, pressing a hand to his hair in an attempt to flatten down his curls and crossing the apartment in several quick strides to wrench open the door.  
  
Matt stared at him in slight shock, though why he should be surprised to see Blaine at the door was a mystery. “Oh,” he exhaled, his cheeks reddening slightly as he gave Blaine a quick once-over. “I . . . I thought you had an early class. I didn’t mean to wake you,” he muttered lamely, hand falling from where it had been hovering over the doorbell.  
  
Blaine frowned, his half-asleep brain still trying to process the moment. Because they hadn’t talked since they’d broken up and now Matt was showing up at his apartment, his brows crinkled in worry, his bottom lip between his teeth and his hands in his pockets. “Cancelled, so I set a late alarm.”  
  
“Yeah, right,” Matt frowned, running a hand through his hair.  
  
“What’s up?” Blaine pried, flinching slightly at how normal and casual the words sounded. But then again, “What do you want?” sounded far too harsh.  
  
“I . . . sorry, can I come in? I feel weird enough as it is without having to stand in your doorway like a salesman,” Matt muttered quickly, smiling in relief when Blaine nodded and stepped aside slowly.  
  
“Is everything okay?” Blaine asked, his brows drawing together even as he directed some of his concern toward his closed bedroom door.  
  
“I was actually going to ask you that,” Matt answered, glancing at him carefully.  
  
“Wait, what?”  
  
“Just . . . yesterday when you rushed out of class looking all worried and stuff and you kept getting phone calls and . . . I don’t know,” Matt shrugged, as though break-up protocol stated that he shouldn’t notice or care, but he couldn’t really help it. “I was a little worried that something may have happened. And you weren’t answering anyone’s calls and Cas said you didn’t go to work and . . . I don’t know.”  
  
“Oh,” Blaine breathed, his shoulders slackening as he looked at the guy that he’d spent the last two years leaning on and the last two weeks not talking to. It was only natural for things to change slowly even after explosions, wasn’t it? “I . . . I thought it might not be. Okay, that is. But everything’s fine.”  
  
He started to smile, but somewhere in his speech he must have looked away for confirmation because Matt’s eyes had widened and he too looked toward the closed bedroom door, taking it in with a quick blink and a heavy swallow before he looked back at Blaine and really appeared to be taking him in, eyes raking down his bare chest as though he could read debauchery in it. By way of his gaze, he held Blaine’s breath.  
  
“He’s here, isn’t he?” Matt said eventually, his voice low and straining against an invisible thread of control.  
  
Blaine couldn’t really think of anything to say, but he couldn’t stop his features from changing, his expression falling into one of slight guilt and Matt exhaled roughly, his jaw clenching. Blaine opened his mouth to say something, anything, but Matt held up a hand, something flashing angrily in his eyes. “Don’t,” he let out sharply, taking one step away from both Blaine and the closed door.  
  
Blaine hated this, the look on Matt’s face. It clenched his throat because no matter what happened he couldn’t stand the fact that he was the one putting that look there. “Matt,” he started, taking a step forward, but the distance never closed and the look only hardened.  
  
“Don’t, Blaine, I swear,” he said and Blaine flinched as his name was practically spat out, a piece of paper being crumpled in Matt’s clenching fist. He swallowed hard. “I’ve been trying really hard to be okay with this, but I swear—”  
  
“Matt, I—”  
  
“God, no! You know what, you don’t get to do that!” Matt exclaimed, his voice harsh and hard. “You don’t get to do shit like this and then stand there saying my name like that and looking as though someone kicked your puppy!”  
  
“What do you want me to say, Matt?” Blaine murmured quietly.  
  
“Nothing! Don’t say anything because there’s nothing to say, Blaine!” Matt yelled, walking quickly over to the bookshelf to pick up something and practically chuck it at Blaine, who fumbled with it dangerously, stumbling back several paces. The metal picture frame was cooled against the bare skin of his chest. “Not when we’ve broken up and you haven’t even removed our pictures from your shelves before you started fucking that God damned kid here!”  
  
Blaine didn’t say anything, looking down at the photograph.  
  
“Christ, it’s like you don’t even _care_ —”  
  
“I care,” Blaine asserted, looking up. He forced himself not to look away when Matt shot him a murderous glare.  
  
A moment later Matt shook his head, his jaw tight and his chest rising and falling rapidly as he tried to regain control of himself. He was strangely like Kurt in that respect, so desperate not to let anyone see him fall apart. “I was worried, you know,” he said and his anger had merged with defeat. “I can’t just turn it off even though you’ve basically treated me like shit—”  
  
“I didn’t mean—”  
  
“People never do,” Matt snorted, running a hand in agitation through his hair. “God, do you have any idea what it’s like to image God-knows-what happening to make you rush out of class like that, only to find that you’ve basically skipped out on the entire world to have a romp in the sheets with your new-found fuck buddy—”  
  
“Don’t call him that,” Blaine interrupted sharply, his eyes narrowing. “Be mad at me if you have to be, but leave him out of this.”  
  
Matt laughed soundlessly, his head shaking in disbelief as he stepped back in toward Blaine until they were almost an arm’s length away. “He’s in this, Blaine. He’s the reason we’re fucking here right now. Because of some punky ass teenager that’s spent the last month trying to get into your pants.”  
  
“You don’t even know him.”  
  
“Oh. Then enlighten me, Blaine. Tell me what the hell this has all been for.”  
  
“Actually, I think you hit the nail right on the head there.”  
  
They both stared at the new voice that joined their argument. The door to the bedroom had opened soundlessly and Kurt Hummel leaned against the frame, fully dressed except for his shoes, which were still lying near the door. He smirked lightly at Matt, his eyes twinkling.  
  
“Kurt,” Blaine started, a warning not to make things worse, but Matt intercepted the word, stepping between them with blazing eyes.  
  
“Care to expand?”  
  
Kurt raised an eyebrow cockily. “Oh, sorry. I thought it was fairly obvious.” He pursed his lips, his eyes passing over Matt with a smirk that seemed to make the other man’s blood boil. “But I guess I’ll spell it out for you. Basically, it all amounted to a good fuck.”  
  
Matt shook his head disbelievingly, desperately trying to control himself, but Kurt spoke again. “But hey, if you’re not giving it to him, you shouldn’t be surprised that he’s going to get it somewhere better. But if you need any tips, it looks like he’s awfully fond of pity sex—”  
  
Blaine started as Kurt was silenced, the breath knocked out of him as Matt rushed forward, his hands grabbing fistfuls of sweater and shoving the boy hard against the wall.  
  
“Matt!”  
  
“I swear to God, kid—”  
  
“Hey, I’m just trying to help you get laid, man,” Kurt returned, something rough in his voice after the collision between his back and the wall. “But I’m sure that now that this whole thing has got him feeling sorry for you, you’ll hardly have any trouble.”  
  
Blaine, halfway through a movement to separate the two of them, froze and the sounds of whatever Matt snarled in reply seemed to ebb away, the words he’d last heard coming like a punch in the gut. He was surprised he didn’t fold over like a flimsy sheet of paper and float away. Because he had been stupid, so completely stupid that he’d almost forgotten how it had all started and what the point of it all had been. How Kurt’s whole purpose had been to indulge in the chase, to play the game until Blaine had relented or ended it. He had said it all so very clearly, never hidden it, but Blaine had overlooked it, had forgotten it in the odd, revealing acts of vulnerability and had even allowed himself to think—but God, so stupid, allowing himself to walk right in through the door because there was something sad about him. But who could even tell what was real in this anymore? Apparently none of the things that had drawn him in and allowed him to let things fall apart were.  
  
He swayed on his feet, an ache in his lungs, and the only thing that came out of the flow of anger was a hand on his ex-boyfriend’s shoulder.  
  
He ignored Kurt’s smirk as he muttered, “Matt, don’t,” nor whether it changed when he continued, “He’s not worth it.”  
  
Some of the rage seemed to pass and Matt’s hands dropped as he looked at Blaine with some of that curiosity and concern that he couldn’t quite bring himself to be rid of, trying to figure what had, in that split second, changed.  
  
Blaine barely looked at him, instead meeting Kurt’s gaze silently, his eyes narrowing against the hypnotizing twinkle of cerulean before him. Kurt looked smug and it only made Blaine even more furious with himself. He didn’t have anything to say, nothing because he was more mad at his own idiocy than Kurt himself and the only word that he was able to utter was a bitter, “Three.”  
  
 _And I’m dying to know which will come first: the third strike, or you letting me fuck that pretty little ass of yours._  
  
If Kurt was surprised, the only way he showed it was with a quick blink. He looked at Blaine with an indiscernible expression, but the smirk was still there and ever present and a beat afterward there was something of a twinkle still in his eye.  
  
“Well,” he muttered, his gaze slightly harder than usual. “Looks like either way, I won.”  
  
Blaine exhaled, unclenching his fist forcibly to keep it from punching the wall beside Kurt. “What, do you want a medal?”  
  
“Funny how easy you were to play once I had the rules figured out,” Kurt continued casually, just pushing for the sake of it.  
  
“Congratulations,” Blaine grunted sarcastically, half wishing looks could kill because he thought that maybe seeing the damage caused would be satisfying. “You got what you wanted, now get out.”  
  
Kurt laughed, a flicker, something of a miniscule reflection in his look as he squeezed past Blaine. They were right beside each other when he paused and looked at Blaine, a scrutinizing gaze of just how far he ought to go. “You know, if anything, you should be flattered.”  
  
“Flattered?” Blaine repeated, his muscles quaking with each instant he forced them still, with each reassurance of _he’s not worth it_ that he mentally chanted to himself.  
  
“Yeah. I rarely stick around for seconds.”  
  
“Oh, I am _honored_ beyond belief,” Blaine replied sarcastically, stepping forward until they were nose to nose and he could see the fire in his own amber eyes blazing across the surface of Kurt’s oceanic ones. “Now get the fuck out of my apartment.”  
  
Kurt looked at him with something reminiscent of disappointment, as though Blaine had failed to pass some final test, and he stepped back, flashing a smirk and the silently observing Matt before he stooped to pick up his shoes. “Well, gentlemen,” he grinned smugly as he opened the door. “This was fun, though I’m sure the pleasure was entirely mine.”  
  
The door swung shut on the apartment.  
  
The minute he left behind was silent. Blaine fell back against the wall as thought he string holding him up had finally snapped. He raised a hand to his temple and rubbed his eyes, trying to rid himself of feeling, of the pain in his head and the anger in his veins and the ache of his bones, but it all circled him like vultures as he lay dying of thirst in a waterless desert, just contemplating how _stupid_ he had been.  
  
Matt was saying something, but it didn’t register until he had stopped speaking and Blaine felt his gaze on him.  
  
“Oh, but . . . Blaine, you didn’t actually—”  
  
“You can get out too,” Blaine interrupted, harsher than he should have, but he had no apologies to give, no emotion to spare.  
  
“Blaine—”  
  
“Leave. Please.”  
  
He didn’t look to see if the imperative was followed and he didn’t move for a long time after the door had clicked shut, his back still to the wall, his face still in one hand.  
  
 _Would it have been worth while  
If one, settling a pillow or throwing of a shawl,  
And turning toward the window, should say: “That is not it at all,  
That is not what I meant, at all.”_  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the poetry bookmarking the chapter are excerpts from T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (it's one of my favorite poems, go read it!) :)


	12. Chapter 12

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for weeks.”  
  
“I don’t understand though, Cas. Did he quit or—”  
  
Cas sighed and wrenched her gaze from the glass in her hand in order to look at Matt. He sat perched delicately on the edge of his stool, his brow furrowed and his eyes tired. She shook her head. “What do you want me to tell you, Matt? I haven’t seen him since he called weeks ago asking me to cover for him. If I hadn’t noticed him vanishing into practice rooms in the music hall or sneaking into lectures late, I would have thought he’d dropped off the face of the planet.”  
  
It pained her to look at him. He looked like he was recovering from exhaustion, but in the very early stages, where one had stopped running but was still doubled over in pain from the stitch in one’s side. The toll of the break-up seemed to linger, not fading entirely because he was too busy worrying about Blaine and being angry with himself for still caring. She didn’t know whether she could ask what happened. Who had done the dumping and why. But she remained silent on that count, in case it all somehow turned out to be her fault.  
  
“If you’re worried about him, maybe you should just find him and _talk_ ,” she said softly, passing a drink with a light smile before looking back at him, his fingers intertwined delicately around the glass of alcohol in front of him. He didn’t say anything for a long time, his gaze passing over the bar and lingering as he gazed at the space in front of him. He remained immobile for a minute before his gaze hardened and he finished off his drink in one gulp, sliding from the barstool as he did so.  
  
“I can’t,” he replied, sounding forlorn before leaning over the counter and placing a kiss to her cheek. “I can’t care quite yet.”  
  
“You don’t have to leave,” she murmured quietly as reply, as though it were supposed to function in some manner of consolation.  
  
He actually laughed at that, though after the laugh died away he shook his head and looked a little annoyed, as though there were some entity that had taken a grip on his life and was preventing him from doing all the things he wanted to. “Thanks, but I’m really not in a mood to get into a brawl right now, and I have a feeling that if I stay I’ll end up doing something I regret.”  
  
Cas frowned in confusion, unable to interpret the statement, wondering what it could be that could prompt him to an uncontrolled spontaneity that had never really been a large part of his nature. He pushed his way through the crowd as though he wished to get away rather than get somewhere else. It wasn’t until she was reminded that she had to man the bar that Cas broke away from her own thoughts and the door that had closed behind Matt, closing him off from any association with the dark bar.  
  
She nodded in acknowledgement when asked to cover the other end of the bar. Once she’d finished what she’d been doing, she began working her way over. It was odd for her, being behind the bar. She was far more used to being out in the crowd, carrying drinks to those huddled around pool tables and television sets, but with Blaine not showing up to work she was forced behind it, the only explanation for his absence being that everything was fine and that she shouldn’t worry about it.  
  
Kurt Hummel was at the other end of the bar and she started slightly when she noticed him, simply because she hadn’t realized that he was there and that rarely happened. Kurt Hummel had always had a presence that demanded to be noticed. Maybe it was because she had grown so used to his interactions with Blaine, but the fact that she hadn’t noticed him in his solitude was oddly disconcerning. The fact that giving him buttons to push and then taking them away somehow worked negatively on the power of his presence.  
  
It had been one of the reasons that she had jokingly suggested the notion that Kurt would one day go after Blaine—there was something fascinating about pushing Blaine. Something that would make him come alive with a luster that was usually dulled with the progression of time, but not in a way that was noticeable until polish was once again applied to it. There was a glint of passion that would spark in him, something outside that of usual control, and it made her want to see if she could light a fire that might bring him to life. And at the same time, maybe she could solve the problem of Kurt Hummel, quench that which was leaning her curiosity to discover what it was about him that seemed to attract and turn not only heads, but whole sexualities.  
  
She couldn’t decide if this was selfish or simply scientific, or even if there was that much of a difference between the two.  
  
He was quiet now, Kurt Hummel. His usual posture, that of a hunter searching for his prey in the middle of a crowd, alert and elegantly poised, had been left at home. He sat facing the bar, ignoring all those he had his back to, even the few that had seen him come in and were still waiting for him to make his next move.  
  
He had on a sweater underneath the dark, artfully worn leather of his jacket, but other than that and a pair of gloves, nothing had been added to his person in order to protect from the coming chill of winter weather, its presence already felt in the snow that had been integrated into his artfully crafted hair and was now melting, strands of the upsweep dipping down under the weight of water, threatening to drip down in the half-empty glass of liquid that glowed a dark amber beneath the lighting of the bar.  
  
“Can I get you a refill?” she asked finally, when it became clear that the portrait of a static nature would not make a leap back into the movement of time, despite the flow of action occurring around it.  
  
He looked up at her and while his eyes were hard from thought rather than hazy from being lost in it, he didn’t answer her right away. Cas watched his fingers skim around the edge of his glass as he contemplated her question. The motion produced no light frequency of sound and he crinkled his nose as though dissatisfied with something to that effect. The disappointing liquid flashed in the lights as the glass was lifted and its contents poured down his throat.  
  
“Rum and coke,” he muttered gruffly, almost dismissively, as he pushed the glass toward her.  
  
There was a sense of dominance and dismissal in his voice, but it was a ding of ruling that demanded to be left alone rather than subordination.  
  
“Changing it up, huh?” she said cheerfully as she prepared the drink. She didn’t expect an answer because it was just an observation, something small in the sea of changes that seemed to be occurring with the season. A choice that only seemed like it should mean more than it did because one wants to find meaning in other things.  
  
So it surprised her when Kurt’s gaze sharpened its focus and snapped back to her. He looked a little shocked that she’d noticed (or perhaps that there was something to notice in the first place) and his eyes narrowed, the visible pinpricks of his irises dark in the light of the bar.  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
Cas smiled carefully under the hard gaze and placed the drink in front of him. “Just that you usually order something else.” His look gave her the oddest need for delicacy, even though she had only seen him breakable once, and even then he had tucked it into his jacket so that nobody would see.  
  
There was a clench in his jaw, a hardening of a character and rather than satisfying her with an answer he leaned away from her and pulled the drink closer. Cas felt her own person slipping away from him, as though she had violated that initial demand for solitude and now was forced into exile. But as she watched his gaze pass round the bar, the glass pressed to his lips, it was as though the only way that exile could be achieved was if he fled over the border, not she.  
  
“He’s not here,” she murmured when the drink went undrunk and the boy’s gaze simply remained trained down the bar, as though he were expecting something or waiting for someone and the only factor missing from an otherwise static dynamic was Blaine. It made Cas wonder whether it was all actually connected, the chase ended, but with no sense of restored balance.  
  
He started again and this time he didn’t look as much scrutinizing as he did suspicious. “Who?” he replied and his voice was sharp, his grip on the glass of alcohol hard in a way that sought control in the midst of displaying betrayal.  
  
“Blaine,” she replied simply and his lip downturned even as the microscopic widening of his eyes and intake of his breath flashed by in a single frame of a moving picture, visible only when the film was paused.  
  
“So?”  
  
“In case you were looking for him.”  
  
“I wasn’t,” he replied curtly, the anger slightly disconcerning because that was all that it appeared to be—anger. There was no defensiveness, no simple admittance, only frustration and annoyance.  
  
It was that annoyance that broke the stillness of a picture and he turned away from the bar and slid to the ground, his hand gripping the glass and the venture into the crowd blind, leaving behind the careful calculations of prey selection.  
  
It was the only factor that drew away from the flashback of old and it made Cas wonder whether she had been wrong after all. If the quiet, thoughtful anger was not a product, but rather a constant, something that had been overlooked in the desperate desire for not only characterization, but some manner of entertainment.  
  
She moved closer to the bar as she felt Carson passing behind her to get to the other side, and she went about her work with a passing interest that would every once in a while direct her gaze into the crowd in an attempt to see the boy that had been swallowed by it.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
She jumped, registering the familiar voice and she turned until the vision that had been seeking Kurt landed on the surprise apparition of the missing puzzle piece. “Blaine!” she exclaimed in surprise and when she moved it was almost in a sense automatic, the flexing of her toes as she leaned over the counter to yield to the wrap of his arm around her. “You’re alive.”  
  
Blaine smiled at her and while there was something a little tired about him, a little somber within the twinkle of his eyes, it seemed genuine, as though it truly carried some joy, though she was unsure of whether it was from seeing her or something else entirely.  
  
“I am,” he replied, adjusting the position of the strap of his messenger bag. “Is Carson here?”  
  
“He’s around,” Cas said, her brow crinkling curiously. “How come?”  
  
“I’m supposed to meet with him,” he informed her, running a hand through his hair.  
  
“Oh, so you haven’t actually come to relieve me of having to take over _your_ duties?” she teased, leaning a hand under her chin.  
  
Blaine snorted slightly and when he looked back up at her, he looked slightly apologetic. He wore the look in the same way that he did the one of gravity—like it had been one of the few that he’d donned for a long time. “No, actually.” Before she could adjust her composure to match the confusion that had prodded at her sense, Blaine looked away and exclaimed, “Carson, hey!” and allowed himself to be drawn aside to a secluded corner of the bar.  
  
Cas frowned, distracted from her work by the presence of her boss and her friend, elusive and yet strangely present, leaning close over the bar as though they were holding some sort of war council, a secret sort of business. She served drinks but didn’t focus on them, choosing instead to observe the one boy that she hadn’t gotten a chance to and she wasn’t sure whether she was supposed to be surprised by what she saw.  
  
It had actually always been an astounding talent of his, Blaine’s ability to appear calm and put together until something pushed him too far. There was something in his expression denoting a mission that he was choosing to follow until completion rather than dwelling on that which others couldn’t help but sink into. Maybe it was that primitive instinct that he was giving in to, choosing to fly rather than to fight something that he didn’t think he could win against.  
  
He leaned over the counter and talked while the bar’s owner listened, gesturing about the bar every once in a while or pressing a hand to his own chest as he leaned away, his expression earnest. Cas wondered if the hand placement accompanied confession or whether it was a plea to understand the nature of the victimized. Carson’s eyes were retaining their hold on the boy as he spoke and every once in a while he would nod almost stoically. He looked over the papers that had been spread between them, pointing to various sections and writing things on a piece of paper that was pushed back and forth like a bargaining chip and the both of them smiled at some secret agreement that had been reached.  
  
There was a hearty clap on the shoulder and a laugh and moments later Carson was again easing his way past Cas toward his office and Blaine was sitting alone, his feet resting on the top rung of the high barstool. When he was left on his own his eyes closed and, hands folding over the papers that were still spread before him, his head leaned back, as though there were a type of tension holding him in a certain stiffness that had been, even if just a little bit, released.  
  
It was then that she caught the first glimpse of how trampled he may have felt.  
  
Cas walked over to him as the number of unserved members of the bar diminished, tilting her head to catch the observation before it had a chance to be covered up. “You want something to drink?”  
  
Blaine pursed his lips as he considered her, contemplated her question, as though he were trying to decide if it was a test. “No, I’m good, thanks.”  
  
Cas resisted the urge to ask him if he really was and instead allowed her gaze to pass over the papers he had spread before him, some with writing that she couldn’t quite manage to read upside-down and some that had no words to read, yet she could almost understand them in their inarticulate melodies.  
  
“Where’d you drive Carson off to, then?” she asked finally, leaning against the bar.  
  
“To hire a new barman, I expect.”  
  
“You’ve quit, then?” Cas murmured and what brought the surprise to her voice was not the action itself, but the fact that she could still manage to be shocked by it.  
  
Blaine laughed softly, but it died away fairly quickly and he wrinkled his nose slightly at himself. “Not really . . . I mean, I have, I guess, but we’re working on a new arrangement.”  
  
“A new arrangement?”  
  
“Yeah. I’m trying to work out the possibility for . . . I guess a new kind of open mic night, but—”  
  
“But with more regular, in-house entertainment,” Cas finished, looking at him with her eyebrows raised in surprise. She had been aware of the arrangement that Blaine and Carson had always had, but over time it had dissolved not by any sort of malicious intent, but rather by happenstance, transforming into something that was simply present in the background, pushing the bartending to the front and the music to the side.  
  
“Why now?”  
  
He hesitated and bit his lip. “Because . . .” he started and his eyes grew darker, the curve of his mouth elegant even in the restricted somberness. “I feel like I need to regain some control over my own life.”  
  
There was a movement of dispersal in the bar and over Blaine’s shoulder Cas finally spotted Kurt again, in a dark corner, engaged in his usual activity, his gaze swiveling quickly away from the two of them.  
  
“You’re writing again, then?” she asked eventually, choosing to ignore the boy in the corner for the sake of a conversation with a friend. Her fingers skimmed lightly along the papers near his, a question of permission that he granted to her, withdrawing his hands from where they had been grounding the sheet music against the wood.  
  
“Yeah . . . I’ve had a lot of inspiration lately, I guess. Though there’s one song that I had the melody of and I . . . I must have misplaced the sheet music and it’s just . . . not working but . . . I don’t know . . . I also realized that for a long time I was trying to write emotions into something that wasn’t their recipient,” he muttered.  
  
“Are you talking about Matt?” she questioned quietly, the vision of the man who had been in almost that exact spot less than an hour ago, with the seriousness of break-up etched into his features but . . . Cas paused and looked at the somber melancholia that Blaine wore silently like a cloak and she realized there must be something more. Something in addition to a parting of the ways that would elicit such emotion that had arrived in a forced combination of concern on the one hand and determined withdrawal on the other.  
  
At her words he seemed to shrink in on himself and his hands found the sparkling water that she’d set on the counter in full knowledge that even if one didn’t want to drink in such situations, there was always the overpowering need to do something with one’s hands, to find an occupation that would delay necessity if even for a short while. “It’s . . .” he muttered, his voice so low that she almost couldn’t hear him. When he raised it she could discern the sharpness of emotion, of anger and sadness, but not of regret. “Yes and no but . . . It’s complicated.”  
  
“How complicated?”  
  
“Very.”  
  
“Do you . . . would you mind if I asked why you two broke up?”  
  
“Honestly, Cas—”  
  
“Shit!”  
  
In a momentary lapse of silence there was the sound of breaking glass and the both of them started and their eyes turned away from each other and toward the crowded expanse of the room around them. Cas found herself inhaling as her vision confirmed the deductions that had been made by her auditory senses. It had been Kurt Hummel that had broken his glass.  
  
When she spotted him he was alone at the table he had been occupying and his elbows were resting on the plane of the table, supporting his forehead as he leaned forward. In his profile, she could just see the deep furrow of his thin brows and the frustrated curve of his mouth, his teeth biting down on a patch of skin at his thumb. He was angry and she could only assume it was a direct result of the newly empty spot across the table. It was presumably that same absence of a body that had knocked the drinking glass to the ground.  
  
When he leaned back his posture was stiff and resisting, as though, try as he might, he couldn’t help the motion that turned him to look in their direction.  
  
He didn’t look at her. His gaze froze on a point just to her left and at the open glisten of his eyes, visible even across the room, she gasped and turned to look at the very thing that had captured Kurt Hummel’s attention. Blaine looked back at him, but where he had been closed off before he was now a flood and Cas couldn’t quite pinpoint one expression amongst the multitude that took him over. His eyes were narrowed and his mouth looked displeased, similar to the way it always had when he’d been fending off Kurt’s advances. But his eyes were different, tired from the unrelenting chase and yet full of betrayal from whatever had, apparently, brought the chase to a premature end. After an endless moment he leaned back against the bar and his head ducked, breaking the contact to stare with a pointed interest at a spot on his shoe.  
  
Kurt, when she looked back at him, looked for a split second longer before he shook his head, closing himself off from the world. She couldn’t hear him, but her sharp eyes could just make out the words, “Fucking hell,” before he swept out of the bar without looking in their direction.  
  
She didn’t realize it then, but it would be the last she saw of him for months, at least.  
  
“Blaine?” she murmured quietly, as though afraid her voice would somehow shatter the image before her beyond all repair.  
  
“I should go,” Blaine said abruptly, tilting his head, but not looking at her.  
  
“Blaine, what—”  
  
  
“Look, Cas, I don’t have the energy for this right now,” he muttered, but it was still to that interesting spot on his shoe, even as he stood and threw his bag over his shoulder. “But I’ll call you when I’m free and I promise the next time we hang out, you can do the I-told-you-so dance to your heart’s content.”  
  
Cas inhaled sharply, feeling her cheeks flushing. “I’m not—” she started, but Blaine cut her off silently as he finally looked up and gave her a small parting nod, turning and walking down the line of the bar toward the door.  
  
She tried to swallow the lump in her throat as she watched the line of his back as he walked, but all the pieces were coming together to cause it and she couldn’t do anything to get rid of them but to whisper quietly to the empty space before her.  
  
“Oh, Blaine.”  


* * *

  
Blaine couldn’t quite breathe, something in his lungs closing off and when he finally exited the bar he collapsed against the brick wall outside, the piercing chill of air stabbing but at the same time relieving.  
  
He wondered if that made him a masochist.  
  
He had been expecting it, really. There was a schedule and there was no reason for it not to continue the way it always had now that life had gone back to normalcy, only with a handful more of broken hearts in the world. But that was all it was supposed to be—a return to the normal, not a strikingly odd scene and a dramatic exit.  
  
He refused to read anything into it. That temptation was what had brought him here, wasn’t it? Reading more into something that was really just black ink on a white page.  
  
Blaine could feel something invisible clenching down around him, crushing, and all he needed was some manner of divine intervention, some sort of _deux ex machine_ that would remove him, however temporarily, from Columbus.  
  
As though serendipity were fond of him, his phone vibrated. He fished it out of his pocket and raised an eyebrow at the caller ID. Well, certainly not a _divine_ intervention, but he’d take it.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“’Sup, B. Got any plans for next Saturday?”  
  
Blaine frowned in confusion momentarily before exhaling with a slight realization, his head leaning back against the wall. “Nope. Why, is it that time of year again?”  
  
“Yup. Victory at Sectionals, here we come. I’m assuming you’re coming?”  
  
“Well, like you once said, ‘Once a Warbler, always a Warbler,’” Blaine replied smoothly, feeling some tension leaking out of him at the prospect of an escape.  
  
“Such words of wisdom could only come from me. So two tickets, then?”  
  
“Just the one.”  
  
The voice on the other end of the line dissolved into a whistle and dropped an octave so that Blaine could practically hear the light smirk that must have accompanied it. “Dropping the ball and chain, are you? In that case, I can’t wait to see you, Blaine Anderson.”  
  
Blaine chuckled. Definitely a good escape. “Looking forward to it, Bas.”  
  



	13. Chapter 13

“I can’t believe you got them to agree to it,” Blaine laughed in disbelief over the light jingle of a bell as he pushed open the door to the Lima Bean and stepped out of the chill of the evening air. “For months I was fighting for a Billie Jean/Beat It mash up and nothing. It was always some damn pop song and that ridiculous two-step.”

Sebastian laughed as he followed Blaine into the coffee shop. “I guess it just means that the student has surpassed the master, eh? Or would ‘dethroned the king’ sound better as an analogy?” he mused with mock thoughtfulness as he unbuttoned his long winter coat and loosened his tie.

“I think the best way of putting it would be to say that you don’t have to deal with Wes and his stupid gavel,” Blaine retorted as they accepted their coffees and made their ways to a table by the window. There, their heavy winter layers fell to rest on the backs of their chairs and they settled down in ease.

Sebastian laughed and leaned back in his chair, one arm cast carelessly over the back of his seat, the other around the thick cardboard cover fixed around his cup of coffee. His gaze was trained on Blaine, wholly unabashed, his smirk light and casual, but also very reminiscent of a simple smile. It was all very easy, offering a good change from the recent haunts and memories. Blaine could feel himself falling into a sense of peace, confronted by the familiar and predictable.

“Well, you can’t tell me that we weren’t fucking fantastic.”

“What’s this, Bas? I’ve never seen you having to actually _fish_ for compliments,” Blaine teased.

Sebastian’s reply, over the rim of his coffee cup, was almost as quick. “Come on, Blaine. With you, always.”

Blaine exhaled and looked up at Sebastian, who hovered behind his cup without drinking. He winked broadly and Blaine couldn’t help but laugh, shaking his head in amusement at his drink before glancing back up. “Well, in that case, I thought you were flawless.”

“There you go,” Sebastian grinned and took a long, indulging sip of his coffee. Putting it down, he remained silent, never shifting his position, his gaze remaining on Blaine’s face. He was the perfect picture of calm confidence, his hair impeccably styled, the pressed fabric of the navy and red Dalton uniform crisp and clean. The ideal picture of a private schoolboy, like he had been fitted from a mold. The only thing was that anyone that knew Sebastian knew that he refused to fit into any such mold. It was almost the opposite with Blaine, if he thought about it. The boy who broke molds and the one who, for years, had attempted to hide in them.

“So, where’s your better half?”

Blaine wrinkled his nose at the inquiry, but Sebastian’s gaze wasn’t the prying one that Blaine had come to anticipate, but rather an embodiment of Sebastian’s detached nature. It was light conversation, more interested in playful flirtation than interrogation. “He decided to go off and become his own whole.”

Sebastian raised an eyebrow. “Well put. You know, if your relationship needs a rebound, I’d be more than happy to volunteer my services.”

“I would expect no less,” Blaine acknowledged with a smug grin. “But your wording seems to imply that there’s a relationship still there.”

Sebastian shrugged, shifting slightly in his seat. “There’s always a relationship there, you just have a changed relationship rather than a lost relationship. But back to the point: we both know that the best way to deal with changed relationships is with rebound sex.” He winked cheekily again.

“Wow, Bas. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the word relationship so many times in a row,” Blaine countered swiftly, leaning in toward the Warbler. “Are you perchance trying to tell me something, Smythe?”

Sebastian grinned wickedly and adjusted his reclining position until he was leaning against the table, his arms bent at the elbow and hands folded together under the shadow of the body that leaned over them. “Don’t be ridiculous, Anderson,” he answered, his voice low and smooth and his eyes lit with the pleasure of the flirtation and the joke. “I just want to offer my skills to help you get over your ex-ball-and-chain.”

“Who said it’s him I’m trying to get over?” Blaine replied, his mouth following along in the swiftness of banter before his mind could stop and edit the words that were escaping him. He meant to say something along the lines of “Maybe I don’t need help getting over him,” but he had let his guard down and had tripped over his own emotions. He saw the flicker of curiosity that flew over Sebastian’s face, in its close proximity, as soon as he caught the words and extrapolated meaning.

“Well, well, Blaine Anderson,” Sebastian muttered, his green eyes scanning Blaine’s face, the foot that had causally nudged against Blaine’s when he’d leaned forward present, but its motion stilled. “You never quite cease to surprise, do you?”

Blaine didn’t answer, choosing instead to lean back in his seat and drown the silence in his heretofore untouched cup of coffee. He made no answer because it was as though they had crossed some border wholly by accident, between the light and airy and the serious, and Blaine couldn’t rely on Sebastian for that conversation. That wasn’t the way they worked, it had never been so, and he preferred things to remain the way they were. There was a part of him that was wary of the intelligence that Sebastian might hold if he suddenly became real.

Blaine saw Sebastian catch the movement and the moment and he too relented, leaning away from the center of the table, his back against the chair, his legs drawing back toward himself and crossing under the table.

“Either way, I’m sure my assets could be of assistance,” Sebastian offered off-handedly and Blaine’s shoulders relaxed slightly, the joke working as a needle to pop the tension.

“I’m sure there’s nothing you can give me that I can’t get from a combination of my own hand and the internet,” Blaine countered and hoped that Sebastian could see the gratefulness behind the insult.

Sebastian winced and raised a hand to his heart. “Ouch, B. That cuts deep.”

He dissolved into an easy monologue then, starting with a list of various references that would beg to differ (“I don’t remember you ever complaining in bed, for starters”) and somehow that allowed them to transition to memories and music and all the things that were talked about by friends who hadn’t seen each other in a span of months. Blaine swirled his biscotti inside his cup, laughing and simply talking for the first time in a long time, with no hidden meanings and no ulterior motives. Sebastian flirted unabashedly in a way that seemed like relief because it wasn’t supposed to lead anywhere, wasn’t supposed to be more than a joke and, well, if the night ended differently, then all the better for all.

It was something that Blaine couldn’t explain—the way he was able to separate from his emotions with Sebastian that he wasn’t able to with anyone else.

His gaze shifted as he relaxed back in his seat and his responses took a back seat to Sebastian’s stories about supposedly meeting the man of his dreams at Scandals the other week. But it was a story that was easily tuned out if anything more gripping happened to come along.

What had turned his attention to the lamp-lit parking lot, which sparkled slightly against the snow, was a muffled noise that, even through the glass, sounded like someone’s name being called. He didn’t know what made him look then, the yell nothing new amongst the sounds that managed to permeate through the glass, but he did look and he froze in mid-motion, Sebastian’s voice cutting out as though someone had cut the phone line.

The noise was almost forgotten for a moment, both on Blaine, inadvertently caught in the web of observation, and the hunched figure that, with a bowed head and hands in its pockets, walked against the wind and the cold away from a parked motorbike and toward the lone coffee shop. The figure paused only the muffled cry repeating itself, only raised its face for a reveal to turn around to look at the source of the noise, a small, brunette girl running toward him over the snow.

“Blaine?”

“Hmm?” Blaine hummed in response, caught up in the strange limbo of observation, watching the familiar draw of curiosity in Kurt’s brow as the girl approached him, like it was an exotic occurrence. It was almost a haughty look that remained perfectly distant as the girl appeared to rattle on about something at mind-numbing speed without pausing for breath.

“What the hell is more interesting than my Scandals story?” Sebastian muttered in slight amusement and Blaine could sense him leaning forward in his seat.

“There are a lot of things more interesting than your Scandals stories,” Blaine murmured absentmindedly.

Outside the window, the brunette paused for breath and Kurt took the opportunity to laugh, but the accompanying headshake didn’t denote amusement. His mild curiosity had dissolved into a look of annoyance and something that Blaine recognized. That hard expression that screamed that Kurt Hummel couldn’t fathom the absurdity of what was being said to him.

“Not true,” Sebastian was saying next to him, his voice rising in slight surprise. “But you did find one of the things that is, I’ll give you that. Kurt Hummel, I’ll be damned.”

It was hearing the name from somewhere other than the echo of his mind that jolted Blaine back into the building, his gaze flying to Sebastian, whose own was trained with interest at the scene outside.

“Wait, you know him?” Blaine sputtered.

Sebastian shrugged nonchalantly. “I know _of_ him. Just stuff that’s been circulating on the show choir rumor mill—”

“Show choir rumor mill?” Blaine echoed, trying to figure out why on earth Kurt Hummel would be of any interest in the show choir world.

“Yeah,” Sebastian muttered with a chuckle before his interested gaze turned back on Blaine, who was looking at him with surprise of such magnitude that it caused Sebastian’s brow to furrow. “Why, do _you_ know him?”

Blaine started and leaned back in his seat, his hand twisting around his near empty cup. “I’ve seen him at the bar. Why would you guys be talking about him? He doesn’t seem like the show choir type.” His voice was casual but, even as his gaze shifted outside to where the brunette was attempting to stop Kurt from walking away from her, he could feel that overbearing curiosity toward Kurt, to maybe find an answer to the thing that would explain the games and the lies and the heartbreak.

“Probably because he used to be in the McKinley glee club, I don’t know,” Sebastian replied, shrugging. “Pretty good, too.”

“Really?”

“I guess.”

“So what happened?” Blaine insisted, leaning forward, his heart pounding erratically because as unreliable rumors had a tendency to be, they couldn’t be less truthful than the boy outside.

“Why are you so interested?” Sebastian asked, his eyebrow raised as his gaze scanned Blaine’s face curiously.

“Because I think we’ve finally landed on a topic more interesting than you’re twenty-minute Scandals romances,” Blaine countered smoothly, flashing a wink at Sebastian even through his own internal pleas that Sebastian not question him because he had no answers. He never did when it came to Kurt. Couldn’t give a one sentence definition without it turning into a run-on. Couldn’t form an argument for why he still wanted to know.

Sebastian rolled his eyes at the quipped insult before letting them rest on Blaine again. “Huh,” was the only verbal acknowledgement he made. His green eyes sparkled with curiosity, drilling into Blaine with the silent accusation of not believing, but he didn’t pursue the subject, eventually shifting around in his seat, as though he were settling in to an armchair. Blaine waited in silence, watching as Sebastian popped the remainder of his scone into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

“Well, I doubt I know much more than anyone else,” he said finally. “It was all pretty big news about . . . maybe a year ago and I think the main reason that we heard about it was because we were supposed to compete against New Directions at Sectionals.”

Blaine remembered that competition, but try as he might, he couldn’t find that familiar face in the hazy crowd of his memory.

“It was the usual New Directions drama, really—the fact that they barely ever had enough members for competition. This time it was because that Hummel kid had quit just days beforehand.” _Oh_. “It was good for us, really good, I think, because we’d seen footage of him performing at some national cheerleading competitions as a singer and—You all right there?”

The coffee that had been sliding down Blaine’s throat as he’d listened instead attempted to burn his windpipe as he choked on it, doubling over and coughing loudly, his stomach clenching as he attempted to reconcile the action of breathing with the words _Kurt Hummel_ and _cheerleader_. “Yeah, I . . . fine,” he coughed out gruffly, sitting back to gasp for air and to see Sebastian perched anxiously at the edge of his seat. “Go on, I’m fine.”

Sebastian looked skeptical, but when Blaine took a long drink of coffee with no further complications, he settled back and continued. “So, as I was saying, he was good and even though New Directions had never actually used him in competition, as far as we could tell, it was good for us that he was out. But apparently it was more than simply being fed up with a lack of spotlight. What had apparently happened was a couple of months before that his dad had a heart attack or something and was in a coma for a couple of weeks and when it came time to pull the plug, he basically disappeared off the face of the planet. No one had a clue as to where he was. When he showed up again, back at the school, he was barely there for a week when he was cornered by a bunch of random assholes from the football team—”

Blaine’s blood ran cold, sluggish as ice, and his mind couldn’t help but flash to a dark street and two teenage boys surrounded by a circle of dark, towering figures.

“—and apparently that was when he, like, completely _lost_ it. Like, just went crazy on them, can you imagine? A handful of huge football players getting beat up by that kid out there?” Sebastian laughed, casting an impressed glance at the boy who was still trying to fight his way past the tiny, adamant brunette. “McKinley is a shitshow for anyone not on the football team and he must have just finally snapped. It took the football and cheerleading coaches to control him until the cops came. At least two people ended up with broken bones and Hummel ended up in jouvie. When he got out he was stuck in an apartment as a ward of the state, started spending the time he wasn’t being forced to go to McKinley at that old tire shop (and Columbus, it would seem), dumped the glee club and . . . well,” Sebastian nodded outside. “There you go.”

They collapsed into silence. Blaine trained his gaze forward and rested it on the rim of his empty coffee cup. His mind felt numb and he tried to think and process a history put together from snippets of rumors and the living flesh of the boy that he had come into contact with so many times before, the boy that was all acting and harsh words and cutting angles. Burt Hummel made sense. The cheerleading did not. The whole thing with the jouvie and jocks—he wasn’t sure. It was possible. The thing with the glee club . . . Blaine just didn’t _know_.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Sebastian started to inquire, but the end of his sentence was cut off by the melodic ring of his phone, the light jingle of Uptown Girl, and he made a face. “Actually, hold that thought. I’ll pay when I get back,” and he rose, lifting the phone up to his ear and walking toward the door as he answered, slight annoyance in his voice.

Blaine nodded, but barely registered the movement and the tinkle of the doorbell as Sebastian sought quiet solitude to answer his call. Blaine’s mind ached in its attempts to understand, but where there should have been advancements there was an ocean without a wind, a constant circle of vagueness that explains some of added meaning to nothing.

He looked out at that one place in the parking lot and saw emptiness, felt that strange pull of contrasting emotions, and thought, for a moment, that they had gone, blown away with the flurry.

“Christ, Berry, will you give it a rest?”

The presence of Kurt Hummel burst into the soft din of the coffee shop, starting the quick hum of conversation and jolting Blaine, his attention pulled toward the chaos of the two vibrant persons that had infected the café with their opposing forces.

Kurt walked quickly away from the door, brushing snow off the leather of his coat, that same thin jacket, but engulfing layers, but his speed didn’t seem quite enough and the girl, in a blur of texture and color, followed quickly behind with a protest and an utterance of his name.

“Stop following me, I’m not interested,” Kurt interrupted loudly, unzipping his jacket and squaring his shoulders and Blaine shifted slightly in his seat, half-hidden by a pole and just beyond Kurt’s line of vision.

“You walk away like it’s something crazy, but Kurt, come on,” the girl protested, her voice loud in a way that seemed to imply it was her natural pitch, and she attempted to cut in front of him, but he evaded the motion with practiced skill. “We need a twelfth member or we can’t compete!”

“Wow, that sucks, Rachel, that really does,” Kurt drawled sarcastically. Blaine couldn’t see his face, but the line of his shoulder was impossibly stiff.

“Kurt, come on, don’t pretend like you don’t care—”

“Christ, I forgot how grating your voice could be, like nails on a fucking chalkboard and you don’t ever give it a _rest_.”

The anger in his voice, the clear need to dismiss slashed through the air and cut the response of the pretty brunette—Rachel—into a stunned silence. As they stood in the line leading toward the counter, they almost drowned in their appearance of normalcy.

“What happened to you, Kurt?” Rachel finally murmured, her voice still pleading, but in a jarringly different manner. She spoke at his shoulder, his back to her, even as she cast a line and attempted to draw out something more. “You were never like this.”

“Please, like you ever knew me well enough to know that,” Kurt scoffed.

“Kurt.” Rachel’s voice was so quiet that Blaine had to strain to hear her, leaning in as though there were a thread tethering him to the secrets that he seemed cursed to wish for and destined to hear from all the wrong people.

“Kurt, when you smiled at me in the hallway a couple of weeks ago, I thought—”

There had been a growing ease in Kurt’s stance, but at her words he snapped stiff again, lashing out in defense and Blaine could sense the truth in Rachel’s words. “God, must be really fucking low down there if a smile is going to get you thinking that we’re suddenly the best of friends.”

“After a year, you can’t just pretend—”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Rachel, don’t for a second think that your gender will keep me from punching you to shut you up!” Kurt exclaimed loudly, starting to turn, but Rachel dodged around him to face him as his guard fell down.

“You haven’t beaten up Karofsky,” she accused quietly and Kurt froze, the edge of his profile just visible, his eyes widening.

“What?” The word escaped Kurt like a breath, barely above a whisper.

“I noticed, you know. I don’t know what made him slushie you, but when you went after him, we all thought you were going to beat the shit out of him.” Rachel was talking fast again, the words flying out so fast that they were barely comprehensible, but she didn’t pause for breath, as though she were afraid to lose the moment of Kurt’s stunned silence. “But you didn’t and he’s gotten confident and he’s been giving you shit since, even though half the football team is still terrified of you and you’re just letting it happen—”

“Don’t, Rachel,” Kurt muttered and Blaine couldn’t tell, through the distance, whether it was a command or a plea.

“—And you were happy that week—don’t deny it, Kurt, I could tell—happy for the first time since your father passed away, but now you’re just so _angry_ again and he’s pushing you around and I’m worried that—”

The word seemed to break Kurt out of his stillness and with a scoff he narrowed his eyes dangerously. “You’re _worried_? You’re a fucking hypocrite.”

Rachel started. “What are you talking about?”

“How long have the Troubletones been around, Rachel?” When she pursed her lips and refused to answer, Kurt laughed and shook his head, the motion familiar. “God, you’re so fucking full of _shit_ , you _always_ have been. You only care when it’s convenient for you—”

“Of course not! Kurt—”

“Because it’s all about you! Tell me, Rachel, would you be worried about me all of a sudden if you didn’t need someone to sway in the background for Sectionals? I swear, the fact that we can all fit into the state Ohio with the size of your fucking ego—”

She made an angry motion, her hand rising, like she had only basic instincts to defend herself; no words to speak in her own defense because this was Kurt and even from the outside he could acquire the most astute observations. Or maybe it was because she hated what she saw and she wanted to slap the bitterness, the _anger_ out of the boy that looked like he should have been an angel in another life.

Kurt caught her by the wrist and in one, swift motion he whirled her around, pressing her hard into the column that was just barely blocking Blaine from their view. The motion finally had Kurt facing Blaine and the look on his face seemed to shake the ground beneath Blaine, for it was angry and desperate and real because he wasn’t acting like he told Blaine he had been to get him into bed. Not now. He didn’t realize there was an audience.

“Don’t push me,” he commanded, his face twisted with sudden emotion. Or maybe it was begged, because she wasn’t. It was him, always him pushing people into corners where their claws were forced to come out. “Don’t push me, Rachel, I swear to God.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in God, Kurt,” she whispered.

He opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out. Instead, his head dropped down, as though some of the air in his body were being let out and his grip on her wrist slackened, allowing her hand to slip out and fall down to her side. Something in the movement caused Kurt’s jacket to fall open further and under the thinness of its material Blaine caught sight of the thick fabric of a familiar, brown cashmere sweater.

Blaine’s mouth went dry. He hadn’t even realized that it was missing and there was something in that fact that suddenly thrust something real upon him. Because if he hadn’t noticed that, what else had he missed? What other clear, obvious signs had passed him without him thinking anything of it. Because Kurt Hummel didn’t seem to be the type to keep souvenirs. More than showcases of victory, souvenirs implied some form of remembrance and Kurt Hummel didn’t dwell on past conquests, just as he claimed he never revisited them after the first time— _Oh_.

“It was months, Rachel.” Kurt was speaking again and the sound of his voice brought Blaine back into reality from the whirlwind of thoughts and revelations. “Don’t you understand?” His voice was quiet and he wasn’t looking at her. “It was going on for _months_ before my dad died. Don’t try and tell me that you care when you didn’t even notice when it mattered.”

“I noticed now. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Kurt gave a bitter laugh, the fingers of one hand playing with the sliver of sweater poking out over the wrist of the other, the movement vulnerable and mesmerizing.

“Come back to glee club?” Rachel asked again. “We can help, we can . . . I don’t know, protect. I know you’re lonely, Kurt,” she murmured, tilting her head to try and look at his face, “But you don’t have to be alone.”

“You’re wrong. I’m alone, but I’m not lonely. Alone protects me, Rachel.”

“Friends protect you, Kurt!”

The look Kurt gave her was pained and he exhaled, ducking his head down and to the side, as though he felt there was nothing he could do in order to make her understand. He shook his head at his shoes, and when he looked up again, his gaze was turned away from her and around the din of the café.

Blaine wasn’t expecting his eyes to meet shining blue ones, but they did, with no warning, and just as Blaine froze he could see each sinew in Kurt’s body stilling, his mouth dropping open in surprise.

It was different from the encounter at the bar. Having been caught looking, Blaine didn’t move to look away and, caught off-guard and forced between Rachel on one side and the surprise image of Blaine on the other, Kurt didn’t have time to school his features and instead of the anger that Blaine had last seen, his brows knotted up and his eyes softened in resignation, as though it were all too great a bombardment.

He angled his head toward Rachel before she could attempt to see what Kurt was looking at, and murmured in an undertone, “Do you know what Mercedes said to me when my dad was dying? That even if I don’t believe in God, I should believe in something. Well, I believed in a lot of things, Rachel, and they’ve all let me down in some way. So, sorry if I don’t believe you when you tell me that caring makes anything easier.”

“Hey, sorry about that.”

Blaine jumped and could feel Kurt’s gaze landing on him at the noise his chair made as it slid across the floor.

Blaine coughed, ignoring the look Sebastian gave him as he sat back down, and muttered in reply, “Is everything okay?”

“Just my parents creating drama again, I swear . . .”

To Blaine’s left, Rachel was saying Kurt’s name and even though he tried to focus on what Sebastian was saying (if Sebastian ever needed someone to listen to him, it was when his parents were behaving like children), but Kurt’s gaze was hard and annoyed again as he observed the table of Blaine and Sebastian with a new, obvious distaste that Blaine could _feel_. His jaw clenched as he appeared to be contemplating his options and, after a beat and much to Blaine’s horror, he detached himself from Rachel and began to make his way over.


	14. Chapter 14

Blaine swore slightly under his breath and Sebastian nodded in agreement, as though Blaine were lamenting the idiocy of parents rather than the whirlwind of drama that was about to collide with them.

“Shit, Bas, I’m really sorry,” Blaine muttered quickly, his voice low as he leaned forward across the table.

“I mean, whatever, it’s fine,” Sebastian shrugged. “Not like it’s anything new—”

“No, Bas,” Blaine repeated imploringly and Sebastian stopped talking at his tone. “I’m really, _really_ sorry—”

“Wow, Anderson, are you stalking _me_ now?”

Sebastian frowned at the interruption and Blaine followed his gaze to where Kurt was standing casually over their table. His hand rested indifferently on the back of Blaine’s chair, and Blaine stopped midway through his motion to lean back. Kurt smirked at him, the look he acquired haughty and powerful, as though he had caught Blaine doing something he’d explicitly said he’d never do.

Behind Kurt, Rachel hovered nervously, murmuring, “Come on, Kurt, don’t cause trouble.”

Kurt ignored both Rachel and Sebastian, focusing on Blaine as though he were the only person in the room and waiting for his answer.

“Just getting coffee,” Blaine replied and was almost surprised at how harsh his voice came out, like the feeling of anger in the pit of his stomach.

Kurt’s smirk intensified. “In my coffee shop in my town? Don’t tell me that Columbus ran out of coffee? What will the poor little college students do with themselves?”

“You own the Lima Bean, Hummel? Must’ve missed that rumor,” Sebastian interjected and Blaine watched as Kurt’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly with displeasure and he looked reluctantly away from Blaine. Blaine watched as Kurt gave Sebastian a long look. He appeared almost neutral, but underneath it, Blaine could see the smallest of changes, the miniscule twitch in the corners of his mouth and the cloud that passed over the cerulean sky of his eyes. His displeasure with the image of the Warbler before him caused the grip he had on Blaine’s chair to tighten, but he hid it with perfect ease and his features slid into an expression of simpering sweetness.

“And you are?”

Blaine tensed at the tone, the ache in his chest overcome by the way the words were spoken. Kurt was baiting and Blaine knew what the end result would be. Either Sebastian would take it and surrender the upper hand or he would give it back as good as he got and Kurt would push until one of them snapped. Blaine’s eyes fell on Rachel, who still hovered nervously behind Kurt, as though feeling some sort of obligation to stay now that she was involved. She looked back at him and he sensed what she had when she’d tried to pull away—that Kurt, for whatever reason, was looking to cause trouble.

Sebastian’s gaze flickered momentarily between Kurt and Blaine before he as good as matched the expression on Kurt’s face, holding out his hand. “Sebastian Smythe.”

Kurt ignored the extended hand. “Pleasure,” he replied sweetly before glancing back down at Blaine, who was reminded by the single word of the last time he’d seen Kurt leaving his apartment. “Anderson, does your boyfriend realize how much of a type you have when it comes to annoying prep school boys?”

“What do you want, Kurt?” Blaine replied, his eyes narrowed.

“Just to tell you that I only find games fun the first time around and that sitting in my coffee shop staring at me won’t change the fact that we’re done playing.”

“It’s a free country,” Blaine answered, the scene in his apartment still playing in his memory and his words coming as a result of that more than anything else, like a test. “And you’re the one that came over here, not the other way around.”

Kurt’s expression flickered momentarily, but he was spared the necessity of answering the accusation when Sebastian leaned back in his seat and, jabbing a finger at Kurt, said, “You know, you’re not quite as impressive as I’d always assumed you’d be, Hummel.”

Blaine refrained from the urge to roll his eyes, but Kurt was already turning his gaze back to the blazer-clad boy occupying the other half of the table and only as his eyes hardened did Blaine notice the way the displeasure had somehow leaked away when he’d been listening to Blaine speak.

“Really now, Craigslist?” Kurt snorted, leaning his weight on his arm in a way that just barely caused the unzipped leather jacket to brush against Blaine’s shoulder, startling him because he hadn’t realized just how _close_ Kurt was, nor the way he seemed to linger possessively, like he was marking his territory. He didn’t seem surprised that Sebastian was aware of who he was. “And what about me doesn’t live up to your grand private school expectations? Is it the lack of piercings and tattoos? Because I’m rather partial to just the one of each,” he continued, tapping the tongue ring lightly against his teeth.

Sebastian grinned smugly and pointedly ignored the looks Blaine was giving him. “Well, first off, I didn’t think you’d talk the way you sing.”

Kurt frowned. “And when have you heard me sing?”

“Oh, we always research competition. Take it seriously, don’t we, B?” Sebastian said, winking at Blaine in a way that made Kurt bristle with annoyance. “Too bad none of that research ever came in useful.”

“Wait, are you a Warbler?” Rachel stared, her eyes flying to the embroidered crest on Sebastian’s blazer.

“No, Rachel, I’m _sure_ he just dresses like a complete twat for kicks,” Kurt interjected sarcastically and Blaine swallowed down the urge to snort in amusement at the look that Sebastian gave him. “You two should bond over it.”

“Is that why you’re in Lima? Trying to spy on the competition?” Rachel continued, though she shot a look at Kurt as he took a dig at her wardrobe.

“Please, you’re hardly competition, even before you lost Girl Voice over here.”

“Oh, so then you’re perfectly aware that I can out-sing you in my sleep,” Kurt grinned, his eyes blazing and his quick voice cutting off any response Rachel had been preparing to make.

Sebastian looked smug. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

Blaine stared openly at Sebastian, his brows furrowing into confusion. Because from what he knew, Sebastian was impressed by the rumors he’d heard. He’d revealed as much when he and Blaine had been talking and Kurt Hummel had been a simple theoretical, a dark spot outside framed by snow. So the fact that he was now feigning indifference simply led the question of _why_ , but Blaine didn’t stop and ask because there was that constant part of himself that also wanted to see what it would take to make Kurt react. What it would take to make him _real_.

“Well, then you must have gotten the wrong footage,” Kurt replied sweetly, his face scrunching up.

“Hmmm . . . maybe . . . but either way . . . the flesh compared to the rumors is just . . . eh,” Sebastian shrugged, continuing as though Kurt hadn’t even responded.

“Oh really? Which one?” Kurt growled.

“Well, your stereotypical gay face is hardly terrifying.”

“Says the guy who has the brains and countenance of a meerkat.”

“And I hardly think that a guy who gets pushed around by a munchkin,” he nodded toward Rachel, “Could have taken on half the football team.”

“You flatter me. It was more like one third the team,” Kurt replied, but that thread of danger was finally present in his voice and Blaine could feel the anger rolling off him in waves as he shot Rachel a dirty look before answering, as though she had done something to betray him.

“Hmm, that’s cute,” Sebastian sighed, tilting his head. “But what are numbers in the end . . . Frankly, just looking at you, the only thing that _might_ be true is the part about you being a fairly pathetic daddy’s boy.”

“Bas, don’t make it personal,” Blaine warned, but Kurt laughed in response. The sound was slightly hollow, almost without noise and it was so jarring that it caused Blaine to look up at him to see him nodding with a funny expression in his face. There was a final strain in the smile that he’d had on his face, the condescending smirk, and he nodded to himself for a moment before he looked up and fixed Sebastian with an expression Blaine had never seen and that he had trouble reading. But something in it clenched his stomach and he saw the end result, but couldn’t react fast enough to prevent it.

“Kurt!” Rachel shrieked, leaping backward as Kurt, moments after his eyes met Sebastian’s again, moved forward at an impossible speed, his arm flying forward and his fist colliding with the corner of Sebastian’s eye with a sickening noise.

Blaine leapt from his seat to grab Kurt as his arm flew back for another punch, but the force of the first had sent Sebastian flying back, his chair teetering dangerously on its back legs and he had to grab onto the table to keep from falling backward, sliding the table under his inertia until Blaine grabbed it and Rachel rushed over to stop the chair from overturning.

Rachel’s movement into Kurt’s line of vision seemed to startle him and, no matter his proclamations to her earlier, he hesitated in his movement and Blaine took the renewed opportunity to grab Kurt’s arm, ready for the punch. He pulled it back, twisting it behind Kurt’s back as the latter let out a startled noise of protest, struggling in the hold.

In the chaos of the noise of the moment, from the yelling of the proprietor and the patrons and the murmurs of Rachel asking if Sebastian was okay (insults apparently forgotten), Blaine could do no more than to focus on that small moment, the flex of Kurt’s muscles under the leather of his jacket where Blaine’s hand gripped him. The temporary struggle to see whose strength would hold out lasted but a moment before Kurt allowed himself to be dragged out of the coffee shop with yelling following them and a crowd of persons flocking toward Sebastian in the opposite direction.

The falling snow hit them lightly, the chill burning into their skin, the harshness of the wind emphasizing just how heated it had gotten inside. Out of view of the windows, Blaine’s grip must have slackened because Kurt suddenly found renewed strength to wrench his arm away from Blaine.

“All right, all right, you can fucking let go now,” he growled and started walking away toward the side of the building, sipping up his jacket as he went and hiding the cashmere sweater from view.

Blaine stared after him incredulously, the sound of the zipper startling his thoughts. The idea of the sweater nagged him and he couldn’t push it away even though it probably meant nothing at all and he was an idiot for even considering that it might. But there was nonetheless that small part of Blaine that had listened to Sebastian pronounce vague rumors and had seen an unobserved Kurt Hummel losing himself and revealing fears. There was the way that Kurt Hummel acted when he thought people were watching him, completely self-destructive, and there were also the moments when he forgot to and only one of those could be an act, surely.

He remembered the boy sitting on a bench framed by snow and he was moving with a new determination.

Maybe he was an idiot, but experience had long ago taught him the dangers of being naïve. Just because he had forgotten before didn’t mean he was proceeding blindly now.

“What the fuck was that?” he yelled after Kurt.

The boy didn’t ignore him, answering with a short laugh and a call of, “Nothing,” but he neither slowed down nor turned around.

“Are you trying to get yourself arrested?”

“God, fuck off, Anderson,” Kurt groaned. “Not any of your business.”

Blaine caught up to him then and, grabbing Kurt by the shoulder, pulled him around in a motion that ended up being startlingly fluid despite its roughness and unexpectedness. “You made it my business when you came over and tried to pick a fight with my friend.”

“I think you should worry less about me, Anderson, and more about what your boyfriend is going to think about your new fuck buddy,” Kurt snarled back, his eyes blazing as he jerked his shoulder from Blaine, whirling around to continue walking.

Blaine’s eyes widened as he stared at the wide expanse of Kurt’s back. “Oh, God,” he breathed out, shifting his balance from one foot to the other as he felt a strange sort of numbness spread throughout his body, an accompaniment to the flashes of memory; the boy who claimed that it wouldn’t be a problem; the one who had seen a simple flower and had shut down completely.

“Matt and I broke up weeks ago,” Blaine murmured, only just loud enough for Kurt to hear. Just loud enough to make him stop in his tracks and angle his head as though wanting to look back at Blaine. The desire didn’t seem to be enough, for he only turned enough to reveal the elegant curves of his profile to Blaine.

He was quiet as the snowfall around him. “Christ, Anderson, it’s not all about you.”

“Fine, then,” Blaine said, taking a step forward. His feet crunched on the snow and Kurt acknowledged the sound, but didn’t make to move away. “Why did you do it?”

“What can I say? Preppy looked like he needed a decent beating,” Kurt replied swiftly, the self-satisfaction in his voice strained.

Blaine rolled his eyes. “No, I’m not talking about Sebastian. Forget about him.”

“Sebastian?”

“The guy whose lights you just tried to punch out,” Blaine exclaimed in exasperation, looking at Kurt and wondering where he was attempting to lead the conversation.

“So then what the fuck are you talking about?” Kurt murmured cautiously, his eyes narrowing as he finally turned to face Blaine again, his posture alert and careful.

Blaine took all this in and advanced one more step, taking Kurt right up against the side wall of the café in his proximity. “You told me, when you were leaving, that you don’t stick around for seconds,” Blaine murmured, quietly as though afraid of being overheard by the empty landscape. He wasn’t fearful of whether or not Kurt would be able to hear him, for the boy was impossibly still, not even a breath visible on the air before him. His entire body was tensed in anticipation for what might be said and that in itself assured Blaine that Kurt would hear every word, no matter how softly it was uttered. “That I should be flattered that you did. So why did you do it?”

“Not everything has lines to be read between,” Kurt breathed quietly, the heat of his breath curling between them.

“With you, I get the feeling that it does,” Blaine replied, and Kurt’s only reaction was to swallow. “So why did you come back?”

Kurt licked his lips and something in his gaze seemed to melt, but it wasn’t like spring had arrived and turned a dead land into a rivulet of life. It was like slipping on a patch of ice and sliding unstoppably down a steep incline, the chemistry of melting coming as a result of nothing more than friction. He looked at Blaine and his eyes swam and he looked like he was trying to find the correct answer to the question, the one that was safe for him even if it was very well likely dangerous for anyone else. But Blaine could see how fruitless the struggle appeared and it wasn’t long until Kurt let out a frustrated noise and his hand flew out toward Blaine, gripping the back of his neck tightly to slam their lips together.

Blaine let out a startled noise at the unexpected movement, his mind screaming protest, but it was as though it had lost whatever power it may have had over his body, like the rapid sweep of Kurt’s tongue into this mouth had flipped a switch and Blaine’s body was reacting on simple instinct alone. His hands flew up to grip the collar on either side of Kurt’s neck, his hands flexing around the leather and soft hints of cashmere as he pulled Kurt impossibly close, his tongue battling with the other boy’s for dominance, finally winning out when he wrapped it around Kurt’s and pulled in further rather than trying to push out.

Kurt whined at the motion, the hard, slick slide of Blaine’s tongue, and the noise sounded like a final release, leaking through Blaine and startling every sinew. As Kurt’s arm wound completely around Blaine’s neck he was pushed backward until his back hit the wall and he gasped into Blaine’s mouth from the shock of the collision and from the opposing need for air and the desperation not to break away to fill the need.

He didn’t seem content to stay back, his tongue working a twisting dance around Blaine’s mouth, the dedication unwavering and determined in a way that threatened to make Blaine’s knees buckle, but so absorbed that he didn’t hear the harsh slide of the metallic zipper. He didn’t quite react to the sweep of chill over his bare arms, only mumbling a rushed protest into Blaine’s mouth as his arms were temporary parted from their grip, only to fly back around Blaine to pull their bodies flush together again. Didn’t focus on the movement of Blaine’s arms, struggling to function in the manner that he wanted them to within that same closed space.

Kurt angled his body back almost instinctively when he felt a hand at the edge of his shirt, forced out of the kiss only when he felt the hard press of fabric against his chest.

Blaine pulled away then, pressing the leather jacket against Kurt like he was pushing away on a dock to set sail across the sea. He watched as Kurt’s eyes fell open, hooded and dark, yet blossoming with something akin to light. He breathed harshly, his lips dark and glistening, and his breaths came at such a high frequency that there was almost a constant fog between the two of them.

Blaine forced himself to stay calm, forced his own breaths to cease their imitation of Kurt’s, even though the unnatural pace burned so much that he almost choked on it. He allowed his hand to fall away from the oasis of warmth when Kurt’s rose up to mimic his, and stepped away slowly.

“I’m not,” he started, pausing to cough at the lack of accompanying sound. “I’m not doing this. With you. Not like this.”

Kurt continued to breath, his hand clutching the fabric of the jacket. He had a look about him that wasn’t _wounded_ , necessarily, but that word was the only one that seemed to want to find its way into Blaine’s mind. He could see the battle, the question of a leap, but no other adjective could be found.

“I don’t . . . I don’t do this,” Blaine admitted quietly. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what it is about you or what’s keeping you from what you want, but if you ever find the courage to admit to yourself what it is that you do want, let me know.”

He turned from the expression on Kurt’s face, his own hand gripping hard to the soft fabric that he’d separated from the double-layered armor that had been, in the moment, stripped from the boy. He’d almost made it back to the front of the building when Kurt found his voice.

“And what makes you so sure of what I want?”

Blaine couldn’t help but smile to himself and paused, looking back at the owner of the voice that conveyed no more hostility. “Because you couldn’t answer my question,” he admitted and Kurt licked his lips, looking as though that were the answer he’d been expecting to hear, even though he had, in his own way, given a reply to the question.

“Also,” Blaine continued, his voice surprisingly light as Kurt’s head shot back up, “You stole my sweater.”

He turned and walked away without waiting to see if Kurt was following.

* * *

  
The parking lot was near empty, the cars present representing the handful of people that remained within the warmth of the Lima Bean. Blaine could see Sebastian and Rachel standing outside of his car and it came as a slight surprise because he had the strange conception of time having flown slower than it actually had. He didn’t call out to them, but simply continued to walk and listen to the sounds the snow made with each imprint of his boots.

Rachel saw him first and seemed to shut her mouth midsentence, starting forward. “Where is he?”

Blaine pursed his lips and looked at her. Her eyes glistened as though she either had been crying or was about to cry, but her cheeks were dry and the light flush about her cheekbones could have been from the cold. He almost didn’t answer, stuck in the contemplation of her involvement and whether the brief picture of her presented to him in passing was truly a correct interpretation.

“Your name’s Rachel, right?” he questioned, pausing to wait for her nod of acknowledgement. “You should go home, Rachel.”

She bristled at this as he opened up the driver’s side door and tossed the sweater into the back seat. He looked up to see Sebastian eyeing him curiously, one half of his face obscured by an ice pack.

Blaine started to ask him if he was okay, but his voice held no power to Rachel’s as it demanded loudly, “Where is he?”

Blaine sighed and looked back at her. “Waiting around isn’t going to do anything for either of you, trust me.”

“That wasn’t just something random, was it?” she asked as he was again turning away from her and he closed his eyes. He could feel his energy draining, the rattling encounter with Kurt taking any he had left to spare. When he said nothing, she moved a tentative step closer and tried to angle her face to look at him. “You know him, don’t you?”

“You know, I _really_ don’t,” Blaine responded and Sebastian seemed to sense that thread of exhaustion in his voice and he moved forward. Rachel looked up to catch his eye and, somehow in the time they’d had alone an understanding had been reached and she nodded, flashing one last look at Blaine before backing away toward her car.

Blaine could hear Sebastian saying something behind him and he shook himself out of the dangerous expanse of his thoughts. He turned, finally uninhibited by Rachel, and frowned in concern at his friend, his hand rising up to allow his fingers to twist into Sebastian’s to pull the ice pack away. The patch of skin beneath it was cool to the touch and it wrenched Blaine’s heart. It felt like his fault, like he was the one continuously including others in his collision course.

“Shit, Bas, I’m really sorry,” he muttered and Sebastian’s gaze softened.

“Please,” he shrugged with a slight smile. “I’m fine. It was my fault, anyway.” Blaine let out a laugh, his gaze fixed to the light bruise forming over Sebastian’s left eye. “So, how do you know Hummel again?”

“I told you. I’ve seen him at the bar.”

Sebastian laughed loudly, the noise startling Blaine and the action causing his head to fly back out of Blaine’s touch. He winced as the action crinkled his laugh lines and strained the swelling skin, but his look was mischievous as it returned to Blaine. “You slept with him.”

Blaine jumped at the matter-of-fact way that Sebastian said it and met his eyes again with a pounding heart. “I . . .” he started, “It’s complicated.”

“So . . . you didn’t sleep with him?”

“I . . . the complicated part was before and after,” Blaine admitted.

Sebastian let out a triumphant sound. “So you _did_ sleep with him,” he exclaimed and Blaine couldn’t help but laugh along, shaking his head. “Can I ask you something?”

“Was Matt the complication?”

“He . . . was before, but not after.”

Sebastian nodded, pursing his lips in thought as he processed the information and after a moment he declared, “Okay,” and, squeezing a hand around Blaine’s bicep, walked around to the passenger side of the car.

Blaine’s brow furrowed as he stood in place for a moment before following Sebastian with his gaze. “Okay?” he repeated.

Sebastian opened the passenger door and eased himself into the seat, leaning down to look at Blaine through the window and smiling reassuringly. The look was like a surge of power and Blaine relaxed. “Thanks, Bas.”

“For what?”

“Just . . . thanks.”

He’d opened the driver’s side door again when he heard it. It wasn’t his name, but it was enough to make him pause.

“Wait!”

And so he did, turning around to see Kurt walking toward his car. His pace was quick, his hands in the pockets of the jacket that was once again around his shoulders. He wasn’t running, but Blaine could see the distinct slowing of his pace when he saw that he’d been heard.

“What do you want, Kurt?” Blaine murmured wearily.

Kurt didn’t answer until he had closed the distance between them and even then he didn’t speak right away, looking intently at Blaine’s car. His face was set in a hard, determined expression, his eyes glittering, but even in the onslaught of an apparent resolution he hesitated and his voice was quiet.

“About the sweater,” he murmured finally to the window, as though he could see the object in question inside even in the dimness of the evening. “I’ve decided that I’d prefer to keep it.”

Blaine frowned, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his mouth curving in confusion. “What—”

“Regarding the other thing,” Kurt continued quickly over Blaine, as though afraid of losing something if he let Blaine speak. Blaine stopped and waited, flashing a look at Sebastian before he closed the car door and leaned against it. “I don’t know . . . I guess I just didn’t feel like leaving,” he muttered, his voice slow and deliberate, as though making sure that none of his carefully chosen words were replaced with what he might actually want to say.

Blaine tilted his head in thought, contemplating exactly the manner in which he’d thought to act in if Kurt had ever decided to come back. When he spoke, the words wore the manner of a repetition, but they had softened from their earlier stance of weary aggression. “Kurt, what do you _want_?”

Kurt closed his eyes, looking for a moment like he thought Blaine was being unnecessarily difficult. “Christ, do you need it spelled out for you or something?”

“Yeah, actually,” Blaine asserted, something in his voice accusatory and it seemed to startle Kurt into looking at him, “Because I’m done trying to figure you out when you seem to lie to me at every turn—”

“I’ve never lied to you,” Kurt interrupted, his voice suddenly angry.

Blaine snorted, though he was slightly shocked at the violence of the reaction. “You’re joking. Like hell you’ve never lied to me.”

Kurt exhaled. “No, I . . . maybe once.”

“Oh, really, just the once?” Blaine repeated sarcastically. “Care to enlighten me as to when?”

“When I told you there was no show.”

Blaine opened his mouth to speak, trying to remember the moment, but it was blocked out by a larger, more recent one that loomed overhead. “And most recently in my apartment, nothing?”

“Not to you,” Kurt said quietly, his gaze imploring and that’s when it clicked for Blaine. When he realized that the only things that Kurt had said to him that morning had been a quiet declaration of victory and the notification of a no-refunds policy. That everything else had been said directly to Matt.

As though, in the absence of speech, he had a message to send.

“You didn’t feel like leaving?” Blaine asked, repeating the boy’s words back to him carefully.

Kurt swallowed and shrugged, his gaze directed on a spot of salt staining his shoe. He looked as though he were trying to find an old sense of comfort in smallness. “I . . . didn’t want to.”

“And do you want to now?”

“I . . .” Kurt hesitated and Blaine could see his hands balling into fists within the confines of his pockets. “I want to believe that things won’t get more screwed up.”

Blaine didn’t know what that meant, had to stop himself from exploring any possible notions of what it _could_ mean, but more than anything it sounded like a step forward and he prayed that he wouldn’t regret that interpretation.

“I’ll tell you what,” he murmured. “God knows what it is about you but . . . one date. Then if you want to walk away, you can go.”

Kurt looked up and Blaine could tell that he was contemplating the word choice and the fact that _he_ seemed to be the one that was free to walk away, but not the other way around.

“But I have conditions,” Blaine continued, chuckling slightly as Kurt froze mid-thought, his eyes narrowing cautiously. “But only two . . . maybe one, even. Maybe you haven’t lied to me, but you also haven’t been honest with me and I’m tired of trying to figure you out with you contradicting me at every step—”

“If you’re saying you want to know my whole life story, I can promise you that I’m _really_ not that interesting,” Kurt interrupted, his lips drawn in a stiff line.

“Ah, but _I_ can promise you that I already know that you are,” Blaine smiled. “Besides, wouldn’t you rather I heard it from you than from my current source?” He nodded toward Sebastian, who seemed to catch the movement in the shadows cast on the dashboard. He looked up from his phone and, catching Kurt watching him, winked cheekily with his good eye, causing Kurt to grimace with distaste.

“And the second?”

“I want to do it on your turf.”

Kurt’s head shot up and he looked at Blaine with something akin to alarm flashing through his eyes. “Why?”

Blaine shrugged casually, though the look in Kurt’s eyes stirred something in him. “Let’s just say that it’s tied up with the first condition. Besides, you got to play your game on mine. It’s only fair.”

“For you to play yours on mine.”

“In a sense, except I don’t play games,” Blaine corrected himself. “But honestly, I think there’s too much in the way on mine, because every time you and I have tried, something happened to screw things up. What do you say?”

Kurt remained silent, looking at Blaine for a long time, his eyes flitting across Blaine’s face before he looked down and again focused on that same spot on his boots. His eyes fell shut, hiding the mesmerizing blue of his eyes that had so captured Blaine when they’d first interacted. He took a deep breath, his exhalation curling on the air like cursive and he looked up.

“Okay.”


	15. Chapter 15

December brought with it flurries of activity and classic Ohio weather. For Blaine it meant finals and disappearing, along with all his books and sheet music, into the stacks of the various libraries on campus in an attempt not to flunk any of his classes, which he realized he had been severely neglecting during the past several weeks.  
  
 _Why do I put myself through this when I’ll probably spend my life scouting empty bars and random squares for work anyway_? he texted to Kurt early in the morning on the day of his first final.  
  
He put the phone away after he sent it and collapsed into bed. He didn’t expect a response.  
  
Something in him felt the need to do it even without the expectation of a response. The various texts that would have normally gone to Matt or Cooper (or even Cas), the kind that were more or less rhetorical but would end up inspiring the strangest sort of conversations, got sent to Kurt.  
  
Kurt didn’t text him back and it saddened Blaine, but not because the action in itself was hurtful. It was more the notion behind it, that unaccustomed nature that Kurt seemed to display. The one where he was surprised by the smallest touch of normalcy.  
  
He supposed he wanted to show, in that incontinent passage of time, that belief didn’t have to be shattered.  


* * *

  
He texted Kurt about the holiday party that Cooper more or less dug his way to through a snowstorm and showed up midway through, soaking wet yet still eagerly joining the conversation as though it were perfectly normal to be followed around by maids with mops.  
  
He texted Kurt about how he got snowed in at home when he went to visit the first weekend of the holidays. It felt like an apology.  
  
He didn’t say anything about how he would wake up in the middle of the night with a melody in his head and the necessity to go downstairs and simply play before it faded like the glow of the moon reflected off the snow. Nor did he say anything about the night he woke his father with his process of spontaneous creation. Didn’t tell him about how his father had startled him in a moment of silence, nor the gruff, quiet sentence of, “Did you write that?” nor “You should let your mother know when you have a performance. I’m sure she’d enjoy it,” when the answer given was to the affirmative.  
  
He mentioned Cooper bombarding him with snowballs when he was outside struggling to walk Oliver around the drifts.  
  
He didn’t quite say how it was the first time he was home since the fall-out that it didn’t feel stifling.  
  
He texted him on Christmas Eve as he was lying on the rug of the closed sunroom at the back of the house, book in hand, fireplace flickering, dog’s head heavy on his stomach, brother flicking through the channels looking for the yearly Yule log burning.  
  
 _I don’t know if you celebrate Christmas or whatever, but if you do, Merry Christmas._  
  
His phone lay quietly on the pillows next to his head. The screen had darkened when Cooper landed upon the TV schedule and, standing up in a rage of, “They cancelled the Yule log burning, who the fuck do they think they are?” stomped out of the room muttering that he needed a drink to deal with such bullshit.  
  
“Oh come on, there’s a different Christmas special on—”  
  
“No one cancels my log burning, Blaine Anderson. _No one_.”  
  
Blaine laughed and returned to his book, but a moment later a brief vibration near his head called his attention, displacing the animal lying on him as he reached over to grab his phone.  
  
 _And to you too._  
  
Blaine smiled to himself, his finger thumbing over the number, the one that for some reason he hadn’t yet assigned a name to, but had inadvertently memorized. It was because he wanted to know, but didn’t think that he had enough knowledge to claim the sort of acquaintance that ought to be in his contact list. He felt like he was going against an era when people would hamper to name as many friends as people that they came across in the streets. When it came to this, he didn’t quite want such a diminished level of acquaintance.  
  
So for the moment he left the number in his head, where his heart would have an easier time helping it get lost if necessary.  
  
He angled his head to look at the Christmas special that had come on to replace what usually gathered Cooper around the television and he let out a laugh at the introduction. Before he knew it, he had pressed the send button and was lying casually back, his face directed at the action on the screen.  
  
He waited for the rings to stop with a smile on his face, planning the voice mail that he was going to leave, but the phone fell silent before it reached the automated voice mailbox.  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“Kurt?” Blaine started in surprise, somehow not expecting the phone to be answered despite the delicate balance of normality that had been established.  
  
“Of course it’s me. Who did you think you were calling?” Kurt voice, initially so wound with curiosity and suspicion that Blaine could almost picture the expression on his face, changed into that old tone, hard and defensive, as though seeing the possibility of the call being a misdial.  
  
“Well, you texted me back, which isn’t in habit for you. Just wanted to make sure that you weren’t kidnapped or something,” Blaine chuckled, sitting up and leaning against the couch, his eyes flashing in the light of the black and white screen playing out on the TV before him.  
  
Kurt didn’t answer, but Blaine waited. He didn’t know where the balance had shifted to where he wasn’t running, but waiting, and Kurt wasn’t chasing but lingering behind, but in the flow of time, Blaine knew that they both realized how movement would have to play out again.  
  
“Well, you finally communicated something worthy of a response.”  
  
“Well, golly gee, guess I’m finally stepping up in the world.”  
  
Kurt snorted on the other end, again falling silent as a peal of laughter and cheers rose up from the television. Blaine let out a soft groan at that which elicited the laugh track, leaning his head back against the cushions.  
  
“Are you watching something?” Kurt muttered and Blaine could hear a soft change in movement on Kurt’s side of the conversation, the hum of mild background noise fading as the boy seemed to settle down into a comfortable position.  
  
“Your friend is on TV in some Christmas special.”  
  
“Friend?”  
  
“That Rachel girl.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Blaine’s fingers tangled in the fur of the dog that had shifted to lie with his head in Blaine’s lap. “Yeah. You should warn her that my brother is irrationally displeased at the lack of traditional programming and he’ll probably go after those replacing it with the intention to kill.”  
  
“He’s got a point,” Kurt replied. “Is it bad?”  
  
“It’s surprisingly good. Very campy, but I think they’re going for a Judy Garland Christmas special sort of thing, so campy works.”  
  
“You groaned though. If you knew Rachel, it would make perfect sense, but as it is . . .” Kurt said after a moment and Blaine laughed.  
  
“Actually, there a bunch of girls dancing now and their dresses are so short I’m actually afraid someone is going to flash a vagina at me, and as a gay man, I don’t appreciate it,” Blaine told him smoothly, smile riding on his voice like a wave.  
  
The response he got wasn’t one that he’d necessarily been expecting and it shot something like a bullet of adrenaline through him. There was the telltale pause on the other end, but after a moment, Kurt laughed and the noise distracted Blaine entirely from both the spectacle in question and the room around him.  
  
It was a brief rumble, more of a hum than a guffaw, but what shocked Blaine was how light and completely natural it was and he realized that it was the first time that he had heard Kurt laugh, _really_ laugh out of amusement. It was something far more pure and real than those short exhalations of disbelief that he was prone to.  
  
It was light and airy like a bell and reminiscent of the sixteen-year-old in his driver’s license picture and Blaine suddenly wanted nothing more than to make it happen again.  
  
“I understand the sentiment,” Kurt chuckled, sounding like he was making that face where he crinkled his nose and scrunched up his entire face. “One of those moments when I’m grateful not to have a TV—”  
  
“What are you doing this weekend?”  
  
“I—What?”  
  
The surprise at the turn of the conversation seemed to catch Kurt off guard and the way he stumbled over his own words made Blaine smile, his fingers stilling over the silken skull of the dog beside him. “Well, I promised you a date, didn’t I? I’m afraid I’ve been neglecting that promise of late.”  
  
“Hmm . . . I would have thought you’d forgotten me, but then I remembered that I’m pretty fucking memorable,” Kurt muttered, a noise of shifting following.  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes. “That you definitely are.”  
  
“So is this you asking me out? Because it’s fairly unimpressive.”  
  
“And how would you know?”  
  
“Hey now, I think you know perfectly well that I possess skills from that department, thank you very much.”  
  
“Honey, it takes a completely different skill set from what you do,” Blaine laughed. “I have to deal with you being sober and uncooperative, for one.”  
  
“Did you seriously just call me ‘honey?’” Kurt snorted incredulously, but his voice had gotten slightly quiet, as though something in the nickname had engulfed the clarity of his person.  
  
“See, I have charm. That’s the difference,” Blaine pointed out, skimming over the comment. “So yes. The big moment for one Kurt Hummel. Saturday. Breadstix? Pretty sure that’s in your neck of the woods, isn’t it?”  
  
Kurt was silent, only his breathing audible over the noise of the television. “Wow. You were serious about that.”  
  
“Yeah,” Blaine murmured, leaning his head back. “I mean, call me a superstitious idiot—”  
  
“Oh, gladly.”  
  
“—But I don’t want to do it here, just because too much seems to get screwed up when we do it on my turf.”  
  
“Oh, so you just want to fuck me without your boyfriend barging in,” Kurt countered quickly.  
  
“Ex-boyfriend,” Blaine corrected quietly and Kurt made a soft noise of acknowledgment. Blaine allowed himself to fall into the silence that surrounded them. On the television, a boy with a heavy accent dressed as an elf was settling down to tell a story, the familiar strands of the Biblical narrative quieting the cheesy nature of the scene.  
  
“I told you, though. This is up to you. If you don’t want this, we can just end it here,” Blaine murmured, quietly, his gaze on the suddenly somber faces, falling from their cheerfulness. He found it somewhat hard to swallow.  
  
“I . . . what time?” Kurt finally exhaled.  
  
Blaine let out the breath he’d been holding. “Seven? I can pick you up—”  
  
“Can we just meet there, actually?” Kurt interrupted and Blaine paused, his brow furrowing. There it was again, that desperate reluctance to allow anything to occur close to the place where his heart might reside.  
  
“You’re impeding my dapper gentlemanly nature by not letting me pick you up,” he joked, but there was a movement on Kurt’s end of the line, like a shaking of the head.  
  
“Look, I’ve gone along with what you’ve wanted. Just give me this,” Kurt said, his voice strained, and before Blaine could respond he thought he caught a murmur of, “Please.”  
  
Blaine bit his lip, his eyes falling down toward his lap, something about the request desperately striking. “So Breadstix at seven, then?”  
  
Kurt shifted. “Yeah . . . yeah, okay.” His thanks was unuttered, but weaved into his words.  
  
Blaine nodded. “Until then, Kurt Hummel.”  
  
He waited as the sounds of the other end died out like the disconnection of power before he set the phone down and leaned back against the couch until his head was snug against the cushions. He smiled to himself, stroking Oliver gently. “Well, how about that, buddy?” he murmured as the picture before him disappeared, replaced by an announcement and the eventual flickering of the program that was always on at that time.  
  
As though triggered by some unnatural sense in regards to the matter, Cooper bounced onto the scene and flopped down on the couch with absolutely no grace, but a practiced talent of keeping his drink within the confines of his glass. “Someone finally came to their senses and I—what are you smiling about?” Cooper frowned, turning over onto his side to look closely at Blaine, his eyebrows raised.  
  
Blaine tried to check his grin, but there was something inexplicably lingering about it and instead he just rolled his eyes and then looked pointedly at the television. “Maybe I just share your never-ending passion for the Yuletide log burning, Coop.”  


* * *

  
  
It took Blaine a moment to find him when he pulled up to the restaurant. He thought that he would have to wait for him and he was debating whether or not he would truly even come. For all the bravado and the confidence that he’d shown, Blaine faltered for a moment as he pulled into the parking lot and shut off his engine. It was one thing for him to pick Kurt up, but another entirely for him to expect Kurt to show up somewhere at an appointed time.  
  
But he spotted Kurt just as his headlights flickered out, as the boy looked around toward the light that destroyed the quiet, static nature of the snowy parking lot, in case it was truly disruptive.  
  
When the light dimmed, before Blaine opened his door, Kurt turned back toward the restaurant, his hands disappearing back into his pockets, his shoulders hunched over against the cold, the long end of a scarf shifting slightly with the ripple of movement of his shoulders beneath his coat. It didn’t have the rough shine of leather, but rather a dark blue softness, glittering slightly from the snow that became embedded in it as it grazed Kurt’s shoulder.  
  
In the gap between his motorbike and the ground, Blaine could see the bottoms of his boots, tall and slim as they clung to his legs, disappearing behind the clean metal.  
  
Kurt started at the sound of Blaine’s car door slamming and his shoulders were stiff until he turned to inspect the source of disturbance. His gaze met Blaine’s as he made his way through the warm lamplight.  
  
“Aw, did you dress up for me? That’s cute,” Blaine cooed as he approached within earshot. Kurt’s shoulders fell slightly as his eyebrow rose.  
  
“Don’t flatter yourself, Anderson,” he answered with a roll of his eyes, which housed within them a sprite-like twinkle. “It’s just laundry day.”  
  
“I just always imagined you as having a closet a la Mickey Mouse—just rows of the exact same outfit,” Blaine laughed. “Then again, I never pictured you dropping your badboy attitude long enough to do something as quaint as laundry.”  
  
Kurt snorted, his shoulders shaking slightly as Blaine gave him a mock bow and gestured toward the restaurant. “Fuck you,” he laughed as his gaze flickered to the ground, his boot shuffling over the wet concrete of the parking lot before he shifted his weight off the motorbike to his feet, falling into step beside Blaine as they walked toward the restaurant.  
  
“Oh, is that how it works?” Blaine asked with a smirk, glancing at Kurt out of the corner of his eye.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Top, then?” Blaine asked sweetly, pulling the door to the restaurant open.  
  
Kurt stopped in his tracks in the doorway, his mouth dropping open as he stared at Blaine in surprise. “Excuse me?” he asked, his eyes furrowed in confusion. He didn’t sound scandalized by far, only shocked to hear the words coming out of Blaine’s mouth.  
  
“It’s been a source of debate, actually,” Blaine continued seriously. “Cas seems to think that in going after straight guys you’d have to bottom, otherwise it wouldn’t work out, but I’m not sure I agree.”  
  
Kurt exhaled and he looked at Blaine as though ascertaining his worth, scanning him up and down before his eyes glittered and he smiled, dropping the word carelessly before sweeping into the restaurant. “Top.”  
  
Blaine laughed, relieved to see Kurt relaxed momentarily and he followed him in, frowning slight when they paused by their booth. The sight of the table seemed to remind Kurt of whatever he’d been thinking before Blaine had arrived and he slid his coat from his shoulders delicately, tucking it into the far corner of his side of the table before easing himself in after. He licked his lips as he settled down, his shoulders squaring slightly under his white Henley and black vest. His gaze was directed at the table as his fingers went to play with his utensils.  
  
Blaine couldn’t help but be taken with how good he looked, the change of outfit highlighting the defined shape of his upper body.  
  
He didn’t say anything until the waitress disappeared with their drink orders, but once she was gone he leaned forward with a smile and murmured, “You’re not _nervous_ , are you?” with a teasing grace in his voice.  
  
Kurt looked up, his eyes crinkled slightly as he let go of the fork and leaned back in his seat. “I’m just wondering how much of an interrogation this is going to be.”  
  
Blaine frowned. “Sorry?”  
  
“You just . . . you seem to know things and . . .” Kurt paused, rubbing the edge of the sleeve of his shirt, “I just don’t know how this is supposed to go down.”  
  
Blaine shook his head, tilting it as he looked at Kurt. “As much as all dates, at least initial ones, are interrogations of sorts,” he laughed, smiling as Kurt’s lips turned upward slightly, “I didn’t mean to make it sound like it would be. I . . . honestly, I like you, but I don’t know why. And I want to. You said before that you’ve been playing this persona, but I feel as though you’ve shown me more and I’ve like the more that I’ve seen—and no, it’s not because I have some elitist ideas about ‘fixing’ you,” he interjected, as though anticipating again the comment that Kurt had previously thrown at him. “I just . . . I want to be assured in the fact that I like you. You . . . You don’t _have_ to tell me things. We all have our secrets, though I guess the stakes of that is that we’re forced to fill in the blanks ourselves. But I just want to talk. Just you and me, no gimmicks, no costumes.”  
  
Kurt opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again as their waitress deposited their drinks on the table. He contemplated his water, pursing his lips. He looked slightly relieved by the fact that he wasn’t going to be probed for all he was worth, and when he looked up there was a slight smile threatening to break through his neutral expression.  
  
His eyes twinkled, making him look like he was coming to life. “So, what do you want to know, Hamlet?”  
  
“Oh, there’s one. Why Hamlet?”  
  
“You were reading it,” Kurt shrugged, but as he lifted his drink, Blaine could see him fighting a smirk.  
  
“Oh, come on. Like it would be something so trivial.”  
  
Kurt chuckled lightly before he drank and set the cup back down. “Hamlet was Shakespeare’s indecisive prince. He forced the play to go to tragedy because of it.”  
  
Blaine’s brow furrowed. “How so?”  
  
“If he’d just enacted the revenge presented to him at once, it would have been just a revenge play, with one victim. He could have spared a lot of lives. Although,” Kurt paused, and glanced at Blaine with something analytical again flitting across his gaze, “I’m not sure you’re deserving of the nickname anymore.”  
  
Blaine could feel his face softening as Kurt looked at him. “Why? Have I graduated from tragedy to revenge?”  
  
Kurt laughed. “Yeah, maybe. Hence the interrogation.”  
  
There it was again, the notion of the interrogation, but there was no more tension regarding it in Kurt’s shoulders. Instead, he looked amused by it. It was almost like progress, like a layer of clothing being stripped away and Blaine wanted to keep going, to see how much armor could be removed.  
  
But he was stopped by a whirlwind.  
  
“So we were sitting over there, waiting for our food, and I looked over and I couldn’t believe my eyes!”  
  
Kurt jumped at the noise as a body fell into the seat next to him, forcing him to move to the far corner of the booth, crushing the material of the wool coat that had been carefully placed there.  
  
Blaine could see the swiftness with which Kurt’s entire countenance changed, his shoulders forming as straight a line as could be drawn along the edge of a ruler. His expression hardened as he turned to look at Rachel with a murderous glint in his eyes.  
  
“What the fuck are you doing, Berry?” he growled, his gaze passing from her to the boy that was accompanying her, unknown to Blaine, tall and standing awkwardly back.  
  
“Well, Finn and I were on a date and we saw you two boys over here and thought that it would be fun to catch up while we wait for our food,” Rachel chirped lightly, appearing to put on blinders to any sort of discomfort in the attempts to achieve her purpose. Her determination in simply coming to their table was actually somewhat admirable.  
  
“She thought, not me,” the boy—Finn—mumbled, flashing an apologetic look at Kurt, one somewhat strained with familiarity.  
  
“Oh, come on, Rachel, you don’t expect me to believe you’re as dumb as your fashion sense would suggest,” Kurt started, but Rachel cut him off by leaning forward and offering a hand to Blaine across the table.  
  
“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced.”  
  
All Blaine could do was mouth openly at Rachel, whose beaming smile was bright enough to power the entirety of New York City. He glanced up at Finn only to feel the comparison going further as he took in just how _tall_ the other guy was. He looked finally to Kurt, who rolled his eyes and turned away, recognizing that there was very little to be done that could stop the tour de force that was Rachel Berry. He seemed to shrink in on himself, slouching down in his seat, his arms wrapping around himself and it was then that Blaine realized his mistake.  
  
Because no matter how much baggage they might have in Columbus, Kurt probably had far more in Lima.  
  
“Blaine, but Rachel, listen—”  
  
“Nice to properly meet you, Blaine!” Rachel practically sang, smiling at him. “Finn, honey, don’t just stand there.”  
  
“Rachel—”  
  
“So, what were you kids talking about?”  
  
“Nothing,” Kurt growled, his tone clipped and Blaine pursed his lips, choosing not to say anything as the table threatened to fall into silence.  
  
“Oh . . . well, _we_ were talking about how Mr. Schue is totally going to propose to Ms. Pillsbury soon,” Rachel continued as Blaine gave Finn a weak smile and slid to the other end of the booth, more out of a desire to sit across from Kurt than to allow more company to join their table.  
  
Kurt’s gaze flickered across the table momentarily and Blaine took the opportunity to flash him the quickest look of apology that he could, but he wasn’t sure that Kurt caught it, for he quickly looked toward the door, one hand wrapping around his stomach and the other resting on the table.  
  
Rachel looked around the table expectantly, hesitating a little for the first time as neither Kurt nor Blaine reacted to what she was saying. Her expression fell ever so slightly and she looked nervously at Kurt. It made Blaine wonder what it was keeping her there if Kurt was right about the things he’d said to her.  
  
“I hope it’ll be a summer wedding,” she said, turning to Finn. “Because you know she’s going to say yes. You’d go, wouldn’t you, Kurt?”  
  
“No,” Kurt grunted, his voice a low growl and though he shifted under her gaze, he didn’t look at her.  
  
“Come on, Kurt—”  
  
“Dude, you’ll have to come. You’re like family,” Finn started, addressing Kurt for the first time, but as though triggered by his words, Kurt stiffened and whirled around in his seat.  
  
“We’re not family!” he all but spat and Finn flinched, as though as slapped in the face by this encounter as he had by a distant, previous one. “You don’t just choose family.”  
  
“You can—”  
  
“It takes more than a fucking accessory to make a family!” Kurt snarled, his eyes blazing, his anger holding Blaine’s breath in a vice-like grip, forcing an erratic pounding of his eyes.  
  
The comment seemed to wound Finn personally and his face fell from its apprehensive expression. He cast a glance at Rachel, as though it all proved his point about coming over there. But when his eyes met Rachel’s, he bit his lip and, looking down, murmured, “If you care about someone enough, you can make them family.”  
  
Blaine glanced at Kurt as the boy’s mouth opened slightly, almost to the point of his countenance shifting into gentleness, until he looked between Rachel and Finn. His eyes flashed in a realization that seemed to counter the interpretation that he’d originally made, and he scoffed, “Unbelievable,” before falling back into his seat to solidify into a statue.  
  
Blaine’s brow furrowed as he looked at Finn, whose eyes had widened, almost as though in horror, and he gaped at Kurt as though stunned that Kurt had figured out some sort of guarded secret with one look. A secret that even Rachel wasn’t privy to, if her expression was anything to go by.  
  
The table succumbed to a heavy silence, no one quite willing to prompt a conversation. Blaine looked around desperately for the waitress bringing Rachel and Finn’s food, but as his gaze encircled the restaurant it fell on Kurt and he had the realization that maybe getting rid of them wasn’t the key. Kurt sat completely immobile, turned as far away from the girl sitting next to him without actually shifting his position. His eyes were glossy and full of a death-like life, his skin tight across his jaw. The only movement out of him was the occasional, microscopic head shake. Blaine recognized it as the same one he’d seen when he’d met Kurt at his apartment that distant Tuesday evening, and if Kurt had allowed himself voice, Blaine was sure the movement would be accompanied by a breath of, “ _Stupid_.”  
  
And if Blaine knew one thing for certain, it was that he couldn’t let Kurt shut down.  
  
He reached out a hand across the table to where Kurt’s was resting, balled in a tight fist. He anticipated the reaction, the jerk of the hand on instinct at the smallest of touches and he held on, keeping it on the table as it fell flat again, completely covered by Blaine’s. The action seemed to jolt Kurt back to reality and his eyes flew to Blaine’s, sparkling with slight shock. Blaine smiled, his eyes questioning silently. When Kurt’s brow furrowed in puzzlement, Blaine spoke to Rachel and Finn, his eyes never leaving Kurt’s.  
  
“We should probably get going.”  
  
Kurt’s gaze flickered down to their hands as Rachel started, exclaiming loudly, “No, wait, we didn’t mean to drive you away!”  
  
“It’s fine,” Blaine murmured, releasing Kurt as he picked up his coat and slid into the space that Finn quickly made for him.  
  
“But you didn’t even get your food!”  
  
“Really, it’s fine,” Blaine reassured her, holding out an arm toward Kurt and, after glancing between the two of them, Rachel slid out of the seat and skirted around Blaine to stand next to Finn.  
  
Kurt exited the booth quickly, walking toward the door, Blaine’s hand pressed lightly to the small of his back as he followed.  
  
As the bell above the door rang lightly, Blaine caught the threads of conversation behind him.  
  
“What was that about, Rachel?”  
  
“I just wanted to know who he was.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Why exactly was cut off by the door clicking shut behind Blaine.  
  
In the cold outside, Blaine slipped his coat on as he watched Kurt button his own, his gaze fixed intently on the multitude of buttons that were lined down the center of his body. When the task was complete, he stuck his hands in his pockets and looked forlornly at the parking lot in silence.  
  
“Well . . . good effort, then,” he murmured quietly.  
  
Blaine smiled weakly, staring at the boy who seemed to be making a point of not looking back. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“For what?”  
  
“I should have realized that the reason you don’t like being here is because of the amount of baggage you must associate with this place.”  
  
Kurt shrugged, shaking his head at his boots. “Don’t worry about it,” he muttered, crinkling his nose and starting to walk away.  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow, his smile increasing as he called after him. “Hold on, where do you think you’re going?”  
  
Kurt started and when he glanced back, his eyes were puzzled. “Home?”  
  
Blaine tutted slightly and, pulling his phone out of his pocket, started to walk toward Kurt. “Now, I know I told you you were free to walk away, but I also think I clearly implied that you could do so at the _end_ of the date, and I have yet to declare this date to be over.”  
  
Kurt frowned, but the light of the streetlamps reflected brightly in his eyes. “You want to go back in there?”  
  
“I hardly think we’d have a private date in there if we did,” Blaine responded his concentrated gaze fixed on the phone.  
  
“Going to Columbus would be a colossal waste of time.”  
  
“I agree.”  
  
Kurt heaved a frustrated sigh. “Then what? This is Lima, there’s nowhere else to go.”  
  
Blaine didn’t answer momentarily, not until he found what he was looking for. “There’s always somewhere else to go,” he replied with a wink. “Come on,” he instructed, starting toward his car.  
  
Kurt’s curiosity seemed to get the better of him and after a beat he followed Blaine to the car.  


* * *

  
“This is a supermart.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You brought me to the Lima 24-Hour Supermart?”  
  
“Well spotted.”  
  
“The Lima 24-Hour Supermart that only stays open until midnight?”  
  
“Looks like it.”  
  
Blaine smirked as Kurt let out a huff beside him, the curl of his breath a fascinating substitute for the cloud of smoke that would always surround Kurt. He turned to see Kurt glaring at him with an exasperated expression on his face.  
  
“Care to enlighten the class as to why we’re here, Anderson?” Kurt asked, looking slightly annoyed and for some reason, Blaine wanted to enjoy that dynamic for the briefest of moments.  
  
“Perhaps if you allowed me to proceed with the class,” he teased lightly before sauntering toward the store.  
  
“This is absurd!” Kurt yelled after him and in the silence that followed Blaine could hear the crunch of Kurt’s boots as he shifted, caught between annoyance and curiosity and the fact that he really couldn’t leave because Blaine had driven them there.  
  
That particular fact seemed to frustrate him into action and he let out another annoyed huff of air that solidified into a picture of emotion before following Blaine.  
  
“Hey, Hummel!”  
  
The exclamation was the reason that Blaine became aware that Kurt was still following along despite having no knowledge of the plan at hand.  
  
The man lounging at the cash register pointed at Kurt as the boy entered. “If Puckerman is with you, tell him that the manager is here and if either of you even _thinks_ of going near the ATM—”  
  
“Noah’s not here,” Kurt said wearily, as though it weren’t the first time that the comment had been addressed to him.  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow and held out a shopping basket to Kurt as the boy approached. “Who’s Noah?” he grinned, his voice light.  
  
Kurt frowned at the basket. “McKinley’s resident badass.”  
  
“I thought that was you.”  
  
“I usurped the title and he’s having trouble coming to terms with that fact. What the fuck is this?” Kurt asked, gesturing.  
  
“Take it and I’ll tell you,” Blaine chuckled.  
  
Kurt rolled his eyes and took hold of the plastic gingerly, as though just holding it was diminishing the status that he’d appointed to himself. “Is this some sort of joke?”  
  
“Nope. You’re going to take that basket and go that way to find food. I’ll go this way and then we’ll meet up and have a picnic over there,” Blaine grinned, pointing to a closed fast food area behind Kurt.  
  
Kurt’s brow furrowed and he looked as though he were torn between liking the idea and finding it to be the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. “I . . . seriously?”  
  
“Hey, if you don’t like it, I’m sure Rachel and Finn have room at their table for us,” Blaine smirked, the curve of his lips coy, starting to slip in toward the aisles.  
  
Kurt’s eyes widened and for a moment he looked almost mockingly proud, his free hand rising to his chest. Blaine paused in his retreat, feeling a sense of confusion overwhelming him. “What?”  
  
“Nothing, just . . . you don’t even know her and already you’re using her presence as a threat,” Kurt sniffed, pretending to wipe a tear away. “So proud.”  
  
“Get shopping, Hummel, and don’t think that I have no follow through,” Blaine warned, pointing a finger again and resisting the urge to think about what Cooper’s reaction would be if he’d been there to witness the gesture (though his brother’s short-lived desire to become an actor was always the best ammunition to lay against him). He’d disappeared into the aisle when he heard Kurt yelling, “This is ridiculous!”  
  
“Oh, God help me,” Blaine laughed before poking his head out of the aisles. “But ‘ridiculous’ basically has the word ‘dick’ in it, and you like dicks, so I don’t understand why you’re not going along with it.”  
  
Kurt’s mouth dropped open as he caught the pun and he looked at Blaine as though he’d never seen the likes of him. “I . . . fuck you, asshole,” he said finally, at a loss of a better response.  
  
Blaine clicked his tongue disapprovingly, unable to resist. “Oh, no. No, no. A gentleman never takes it up the ass on a first date. Sorry to disappoint. Now get shopping!”  
  
He laughed loudly at the expression on Kurt’s face before ducking back into the aisle, but he didn’t make it very far before he glanced back at one of the convex mirrors hanging from the ceiling, most likely to dissuade shoplifters. In it, Kurt’s reflection stood still, his mouth open, eyes directed at Blaine’s aisle. It took him a moment to recover, but when he did his eyes lit up and he laughed aloud, unable to hold back the reaction that bubbled through him. His head fell with a released tension and when he looked up there was an unquestionable affection in his expression as he looked at the spot where Blaine had vanished.  
  
Blaine was positive it was the most beautiful expression he’d ever seen.


	16. Chapter 16

“So, what’s up with you and Finn?” Blaine asked casually, dipping a plastic knife into a jar of peanut butter and starting to smear it on a slice of bread.  
  
“What do you mean?” Kurt replied, not looking up from where he was struggling to unscrew the top from a bottle of sparkling cider, which he’d gotten after telling Blaine that he wasn’t a good drunk driver and there was no way the guy at the register would sell him alcohol, anyway.  
  
“There was quite a bit of tension there,” Blaine smirked, his voice coy. “I feel like at this point, I can understand that between you and Rachel, but—”  
  
“Rachel’s all right,” Kurt admitted softly, shrugging at the raised eyebrow Blaine gave him. “She means well. It’d just be nice if she meant well when it mattered, that’s all.”  
  
Blaine looked at Kurt curiously, but the latter didn’t look back, wrinkling his nose as he unbuttoned one of the buttons of his vest to grasp the bottom edge of his shirt and attempted to open the bottle with it. Blaine smiled softly at him, tilting his head as he tried to get a glimpse of the exact way that Kurt’s face scrunched up in concentration. “So, explain the tension with her boyfriend?”  
  
Kurt snorted incredulously, then cheered as the bottle popped open. “Tension? As in sexual?” he laughed, placing the bottle on the wobbly table and reaching into a shopping bag to pull out a package of red SOLO cups to pour the fizzing beverage into. “Why, you jealous?”  
  
“Should I be?”  
  
“Definitely not,” Kurt replied swiftly, busying himself with the purchases they’d made when Blaine looked up at him quickly. “No, besides, he and Rachel are made for each other.”  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow, remembering the way Kurt had looked between the couple, like the pair of them had grown an extra pair of heads. “Really? Because it didn’t seem like that was how you felt.”  
  
Kurt shrugged, pulling out a loaf of whole grain bread before leaning back in his seat, his brow furrowed. “He’s . . . He’s going to ask her to marry him,” Kurt said finally, and Blaine couldn’t quite place his tone. “It was obvious when they were talking about Mr. Schuester and Ms. Pillsbury—they’re both teachers at McKinley—” Kurt added by way of explanation when Blaine looked confused. “But . . . more so in the way he was looking at her when he was talking about making people family—”  
  
“Doesn’t necessarily mean that he was referring to the two of them,” Blaine countered, pressing the slices of bread together carefully.  
  
“I lived with him for half a year, I think I know how to read him. Trust me, Finn isn’t that complicated,” Kurt muttered off-hand, flattening out an empty plastic bag and stealing Blaine’s knife out of his loose grip. Blaine, in turn, frowned in surprise at this pierce of information.  
  
“You lived with him? How come?”  
  
“My dad was dating his mom.”  
  
Blaine stopped midway through an action to toss a bite of sandwich into his mouth. “ _Seriously_?”  
  
“Yeah. Sophomore year . . .”  
  
“Do you still?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“How come?”  
  
“My dad died.”  
  
Blaine froze, his gaze scanning Kurt as the words left his mouth. He was busying himself by separating slices of mozzarella and placing them delicately onto his bread. Blaine couldn’t read the expression on his face, but the words were said with such nonchalance that he couldn’t help but be startled. When he couldn’t figure out quite the right thing to say, Kurt looked up, something oddly annoyed in his gaze. “Oh please, like Smythe didn’t lay that one on you.”  
  
Blaine started, for the first time becoming aware of what Kurt must be feeling about not knowing what exactly it was that Blaine had been told about him. “I know I . . . I mean, I do _know_ , but . . . I’m sorry.”  
  
Kurt’s eyes softened and he looked momentarily sad, as though apologies weren’t something he were used to hearing. His gaze flickered down to his still hands before he muttered, “Not your fault, Anderson, so don’t apologize.”  
  
He constructed the sandwich he was working on with great attention to detail, arranging mozzarella under tomato and basil with care and Blaine watched him for a moment longer, a multitude of questions fighting for dominance in his head. Like how well Kurt had known people like Finn and Rachel and why acquaintances had ended with what everyone seemed to imply was an astonishing rapidity. Or why things had to fall apart after Burt Hummel when there appeared to be a support system on standby. Or why . . .  
  
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Blaine ventured, pulling the cup of sparkling beverage Kurt had poured him closer.  
  
“As opposed to what we’ve been talking about so far?” Kurt chuckled, though he looked a little wary.  
  
“Why do you call some people by their surnames and some by their given names?”  
Kurt raised his eyebrows, crinkling the edges of his eyes as he gazed at Blaine with genuine puzzlement. “What do you mean?” he asked, leaning back in his seat and pushing his finished plate of food toward Blaine.  
  
“Just that . . . When we came in here, the guy at the cash register said something about a Puckerman, who you called Noah when you replied. You call Finn by his first name, and sometimes Rachel, but a lot of the time you call her by her last name. Mainly when you’re irritated with her, I think. You referred to Sebastian by his last name just now. And,” Blaine paused, his short ramble bringing him to the question that he’d really wanted to ask. He took a deep breath before looking Kurt straight in the eye. “You only ever call me by my last name.”  
  
Kurt’s mouth dropped open as he exhaled through it. He held Blaine’s gaze in something of a stunned silence before murmuring, “I’ve called you by your first name.”  
  
“Maybe once . . . I’m pretty sure we were having sex,” Blaine countered pointedly, taking the finger sandwiches and popping them into his mouth to mask his unease. Because he’d always felt there was something very important in details and that was one that Blaine had never quite been able to shake.  
  
Kurt’s mouth was still open and he was looking at Blaine as though retracing each step of their relationship to find the place where he could prove Blaine wrong. In the end, it seemed that he could come up with nothing but the example Blaine had given him and his face crumpled ever so slightly.  
  
“I . . . I call Finn by his first name because . . . Well, it’s a hard habit to break after living with a guy for six months,” Kurt said finally, his voice quiet and Blaine grew wary that he was simply going to avoid the question. “Rachel and I have a complicated relationship, but we were never really friends, though I don’t know if that was because of us or because we didn’t have the timing down quite right. Puck . . . I don’t know . . . he helped me out of a tight spot once and he was actually a pretty okay guy once he stopped tossing me into dumpsters. And I don’t even know your friend but he got on my nerves, so . . .”  
  
“He was doing that on purpose,” Blaine murmured, nodding along as each person he’d mentioned was addressed, but after mentioning Sebastian, Kurt fell silent, looking at Blaine with a soft gaze. His brow was furrowed, as though he were trying to figure something out. Like something had gone wrong with the painfully exercised control he wielded over each of his actions.  
  
“And you,” he started, his gaze flickering. On the table, his fingers played with plastic cutlery as he took a deep breath, looking as though he were attempting to steady his nerves. Blaine chewed at his bottom lip, something anticipatory fluttering through his blood. “With you, I . . . I don’t know,” Kurt finished lamely and suddenly, the words muttered in a changed tone. His entire body leaned back like a retreat, a failure of the courage he’d been trying to build up in himself.  
  
Blaine exhaled, trying not to let the disappointment show on his face. He watched as Kurt’s own furrowed into some sort of concentration, as though he were trying to decide whether he was relieved by something or annoyed that he hadn’t said what he meant to.  
  
“You don’t know?” Blaine repeated softly. He didn’t want to pry—well, he _did_ , but he’d promised that he wouldn’t—but he was all for giving second chances. A chance to repeat before he forced himself to let it go.  
  
Kurt shook his head, his eyes closing for a moment before he looked at Blaine. “I don’t know.”  
  
Blaine pursed his lips and nodded. “Okay,” he said, reaching for one of the sandwiches that Kurt had made.  
  
“I’m sorry, Blaine.”  
  
Blaine glanced up in surprise, not expecting to hear his name, but when their eyes met again, Kurt gave him a weak smile, a further apology for that which he didn’t know . . . or simply couldn’t bring himself to say.  
  
“It’s okay,” Blaine assured him with a warm upturn of his lips and he moved on by leaning back into his seat and popping the sandwich into his mouth.  
  
Kurt looked relieved, smiling as Blaine’s eyes widened in surprise as he chewed, swallowing quickly and reaching for more instantly. Kurt laughed and as Blaine moved to grab more still he felt a hand over his own, stilling his movement toward the food. He looked to find Kurt smiling at him with a new mixture of amusement and affection, his eyes twinkling like the night sky. “This date has been interesting enough. No need to make it more so by choking and inducing a hospital visit.”  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes. He started to chuckle, but got distracted by the warm pressure of Kurt’s hand slipping around his wrist and the vast depth of his eyes.  
  
“They’re surprisingly good,” he murmured, his gaze passing from the long, pale fingers entwined around his wrist to the leather of a work bracelet and a watch wrapped snugly around porcelain skin. Blaine’s mouth opened as Kurt’s finger twitched, his gaze drawn to a thin swirl of black ink poking out from underneath the leather. Before he could comment on the matter he heard an intake of breath from across the table and Kurt’s hand fell away, tucked into his lap as Kurt muttered, “Well, I’m a man of many talents.”  
  
Blaine snorted. His first instinct was to lower his voice and reply with, “Oh, I bet you are,”—Christ, Kurt was starting to rub off on him—but he saw that, possibly for the first time, Kurt hadn’t meant it that way. “Are you now?” he chose to reply instead. “So, let’s see . . . you give good head. . . .”  
  
Kurt choked on his drink, his cheeks reddening slightly when he looked up, like he was still surprised to hear Blaine saying those kinds of things. Blaine waited for him to recover before continuing, ticking traits off his fingers, “You can pick up straight guys in bars, you can make good sandwiches—”  
  
“My culinary skills extend beyond finger foods, thanks.”  
  
“Next date then,” Blaine grinned and Kurt looked taken aback for merely a second before he nodded and replied, “Naturally.”  
  
“You can apparently out-sing Sebastian in your sleep,” Blaine continued, at which Kurt smirked in satisfaction. “Which, you know, I’d also like to see proved.”  
  
“You’re so needy.”  
  
“Anything I missed?”  
  
Kurt pursed his lips and took a bite of an apple, chewing thoughtfully as he gazed at the ceiling. Blaine stared at the movement of his throat as he chewed and swallowed. “I can dance a mean Single Ladies,” Kurt said finally, glancing at Blaine out of the corner of his eye and grinning wickedly. “That one I’d be more than happy to prove to you.”  
Blaine raised an eyebrow, matching Kurt’s expression. “With those hips, I believe you.”  
  
“I’m also pretty sure I was the best kicker the McKinley Titans ever had, though whether that’s saying much is a different story,” Kurt added off-hand, starting in surprise when it was Blaine’s turn to choke on this drink. He stared at Blaine as the latter coughed, gasping in shock as the bubbly drink burned down his throat.  
  
“You played football?” Blaine managed, hand pressed to his chest, looking up to where Kurt was perched anxiously at the edge of his seat, his expression a strange mixture of concern and offense.  
  
“Hey, now, it’s not that shocking,” Kurt muttered.  
  
Blaine shook his head, leaning back in his seat and taking a deep breath of air. “No, it’s not that, just,” he paused and looked at Kurt, trying to picture the boy in front of him, with his proclaimed badboy status and haughty expression in a football uniform. When that proved to be impossible he remembered that he should probably be picturing that boy from the drivers license, but that did nothing to improve his imagination. “Sorry, I just heard that you were a cheerleader from Bas, so I guess this is easier to picture.”  
  
Kurt looked confused. “He told you I was a cheerleader?”  
  
“Yeah, crazy, right?”  
  
“No, I mean, I was,” Kurt muttered, but still looked confused as Blaine’s eyes widened and the muscles of his jaw seemed to slack.  
  
“I . . . seriously?”  
  
Kurt smirked. “Yup. I’m pretty damn flexible, you know. That I can also prove to you,” he added with a wink. “No . . . I’m just wondering why he would know that.”  
  
“You didn’t seem surprised that he knew other things about you,” Blaine pointed out.  
  
Kurt frowned, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “People know things about me,” he shrugged, not sounding proud of the fact. “That bit of history never quite got factored into the rumors, though.”  
  
“I think he knew because they were researching New Directions and the only thing he could find of you singing was at some cheerleading competition.”  
  
Kurt’s eyes widened and he grinned, open and genuinely pleased with himself as the memory brought him back to the moment. “Oh, God . . . Nationals sophomore year,” he breathed, that same exhale catching and holding Blaine’s as he watched Kurt relax back into his seat. “I won the competition with a twelve-minute Celine Dion medley.”  
  
“You’re kidding.”  
  
“Blaine Anderson, I never joke about Celine Dion,” Kurt replied seriously, eyeing Blaine with a narrowed gaze. He sounded like he was testing out the name, rolling it around in his mouth and licking his lips like he liked the taste.  
  
Blaine laughed and shook his head, something warm bubbling happily in the pit of his stomach. He frowned a moment later, though, trying to picture the boy being described against the image of the one sitting in front of him. “Can I ask you something?”  
  
Kurt’s grin dissolved into something anxious, but he replied, “You don’t have to ask that every time you want to know something.”  
  
Blaine nodded. “I just . . . it sounds like you had a lot going for you, with football and cheerleading and glee club . . .”  
  
“So what the hell happened?” Kurt finished. When Blaine nodded, he shrugged. “You went to Dalton, right?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m guessing your glee club was a pretty big thing there, right?”  
  
Blaine laughed. “The Warblers were like . . . rock stars.”  
  
Kurt snorted at the description. “Yeah, well . . . New Directions were the lowest of the low. Whatever cheerleaders and football players ended up joining did so, initially at least, because of ridiculous power plays going on within the schools hierarchical system then. But outcasts band together, you know? So . . . I don’t know . . . the football was for my dad and it was short-lived. The cheerleading was because I couldn’t even seem to end up at the top of the bottom of the heap.”  
  
“I—”  
  
“It’s not an advantage being gay at McKinley,” Kurt finished, his voice hard and laced with a bitterness that he’d previously kept hidden from Blaine.  
  
It gave Blaine a strange, hollow feeling at the somewhere deep in his chest because he understood completely. Suddenly, it was all starting to make more sense. The bruises and the distance and the need to protect himself. He wanted to move around the table and wrap his arms around him and help take the bitterness away.  
  
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Kurt murmured, jarring Blaine out of his thoughts. He realized he’d been staring and he shook his head, as though to clear it. When he looked back at Kurt, it felt as though the hazy edges of his person had started to sharpen ever so slightly.  
  
“No reason,” he murmured, his eyes twinkling as he leaned in and smiled. “Tell me about Celine Dion, then.”  
  
Kurt laughed and mimicked his pose until their noses were only inches apart and Blaine could smell the lightest hint of cologne, like wind and rainwater. “How long do you have?” Kurt teased, his voice light.  
  
“All night if necessary.”  


* * *

  
“Okay, admit it,” Blaine said, his hand falling from the woolen material of coat that clung to the small of Kurt’s back, where it had been resting as they’d made their way out of the store. He closed his eyes against the rush of chilled wind and wayward snowflakes, smiling at Kurt as the boy buttoned up his coat and started making his way into the depths of the parking lot.  
  
They fell into step as they walked slowly from the supermarket. Kurt didn’t respond, his gait careful and deliberate, but it did nothing to stop the natural sway of his hips and the way his hand would swing unconsciously between them. Blaine tried to ignore the way their knuckles would brush past each other, but the movement continued. He glanced down to see Kurt’s hand twitch slightly, as though it were fighting the instinct to disappear into his pocket. The first light brush of skin was accidental, but as the smallest bit of tension inflated Kurt’s shoulders it came again, like an experiment and like Kurt’s walk: brief, careful, yet completely deliberate. There was a moment of hesitation before Blaine heard Kurt inhale softly and suddenly the brush of knuckles turned into the brush of an arm and the tentative pressing of palm against palm, fingers intertwining.  
  
Blaine exhaled and tightened his grip around Kurt’s loose one. The air was so quiet and still that he could hear Kurt swallowing and out of the corner of his eye, if he tilted his head just so, he could see Kurt looking down at their intertwined fingers, his breath held for a moment as he waited for the contact to cease. When it didn’t, when the only motion made was the lightest squeeze of reassurance, Kurt did the most remarkable thing.  
  
Like air being let out of a balloon, his head fell to the side and he let out a loud laugh, the snowflake-filled air before him billowing away from the breath he let out. It was disbelieving, almost nothing more than a sharp exhale, but it was different from all the other times. It was different in the way it rumbled past his lips with a joyous sound, happy and completely alive. Like the way it’d sounded when they’d spoken over the phone on Christmas Eve. It was different in the way that it continued, shaking his shoulders and clenching his stomach as he looked up and shook his head at the sky, a grin on his face and snowflakes landing on his eyelashes.  
  
He closed his eyes and his entire frame loosened, their intertwined hands swinging easily between them as Kurt swayed lightly in his walk, his face still directed at the sky, eyes still closed.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Kurt hummed low in his throat in response. His boots crunched so lightly on the snow, as though he weighed nothing.  
  
“You going to address my query or what?”  
  
Kurt laughed again, his teeth biting down on the corner of his bottom lip to control himself. “Who the fuck talks like that?”  
  
“ _Hey_.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Kurt chuckled, his face still turned toward the heavens. “What was your _query_?”  
  
“I was asking whether you’re going to admit to having more fun tonight than on one of your bar adventures,” Blaine grinned, adding a brief moment of deliberateness to the swinging of their hands.  
  
“Eh,” Kurt shrugged, but when Blaine looked at him it was obvious that he was trying to hold back a grin. “I don’t know—”  
  
“You totally did,” Blaine teased lightly, bumping his shoulder into Kurt’s.  
  
“And what makes you so sure?”  
  
“I can prove it to you.”  
  
“Oh really?”  
  
“Yup. With science, no less.”  
  
Kurt snorted loudly and turned his gaze away from the sky to rest on Blaine, slowing his pace slightly to keep them from reaching the car too quickly. “Well, shit,” he drawled lightly, smirking. “Now you know I have to hear the scientific explanation for why I must have had more fun here tonight than I do usually.”  
  
Blaine nodded, transforming the smirk on his face into an expression of professorial dignity. He cleared his throat, beginning to speak in a dry, monotonous tone. “Well, Mr. Hummel, research has shown that the two topics that most often grace the minds of today’s Homo sapiens are food and sexual intercourse.” He paused to give Kurt an impatient look when the latter’s hand squeezed his own, his other flying up to his face as he tried to control his laughter. “Thus it can be said that food and sexual intercourse give the Homo sapien the most pleasure—”  
  
“Oh, God, you _idiot_ , stop talking like that,” Kurt managed in between bursts of laughter.  
  
“Mr. Hummel, do control yourself. As I was saying, it thus follows that the events that elicit feelings of pleasure in, say, a young gentleman such as yourself, would be such that involve sexual intercourse and food in great majority. As it would so happen, dates are perfect examples of such events. The inevitable conclusion is, therefore, that while pub crawling may leave one with one pleasure—the sexual, if you will—an event such as a date not only presents one with food _and_ sexual intercourse, but also with the unmatchable presence of _my_ company,” Blaine finished with a flourish, smirking and trying not to laugh aloud as Kurt bit down on his bottom lip hard and looked toward the sky again, shaking his head.  
Blaine exhaled sharply, coming down from his mock-professorial moment as Kurt’s tongue darted out to lick his lips as his shoulders slowly stopped quaking with laughter. He barely registered the fact that Kurt shrugged as he continued to walk along, swinging his shoulders. “Sorry, what?” he asked, realizing that Kurt had said something.  
  
“I said your ambitious assessment has flaws,” Kurt repeated smugly, and even though Blaine had fallen slightly behind, he could hear the smirk in Kurt’s voice.  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Yeah. Two, precisely. First, if I wanted to eat supermarket food, I could do that on my own in the comfort of my apartment.” Kurt’s voice was a precise mixture of lightness and sternness, spun together just right enough for Blaine to pick up on the fact that he wasn’t being serious. “Second, you’ve already told me that I’m not getting any tonight,” he continued, “So in all effectiveness this was kind of a shitty date—”  
  
His words were cut off as Blaine, having fallen behind, pulled at their joined hands, throwing Kurt off balance. Kurt let out a surprised noise at the motion, tripping slightly over his feet as he tried to realign his center of gravity, only to collide hard with Blaine’s body.  
  
He gasped at the contact and started to scramble to recover, but Blaine was too fast for him, free hand flying up to the back of Kurt’s neck as he pulled him closer to take advantage of his open mouth.  
  
He felt Kurt stiffen slightly in his arms, more out of shock than anything else, melting forward ever so slightly as Blaine’s tongue swiped along the bottom lip of his half-open mouth. Kurt’s eyes fluttered shut as his face fell to the side, dragging Blaine’s lips along the smooth line from his lips to the curve of his jaw.  
  
“What are you doing?” he gasped, his breath hot against the skin of Blaine’s winter-chilled cheek.  
  
Blaine chuckled slightly as Kurt’s free hand rose instinctively to curl around the curve of his hip, pressing a kiss to the smooth portion of Kurt’s jaw that the movement had landed his lips on. “Kissing you, dumbass,” he murmured.  
  
“We’re in a parking lot in Lima, Ohio,” Kurt breathed, his voice rough.  
  
“So?”  
  
“So it’s not exactly a gay Mecca,” Kurt murmured, sounding like the argument would have been taken into far more consideration if Blaine hadn’t been working his way back toward Kurt’s lips, his kisses wet and open mouthed.  
  
“Maybe if we get a trend started it will become one,” Blaine countered, not fighting his sudden need to be reckless, pulling back and tilting his head until he found Kurt’s lips again, his fingers kneading the muscles of Kurt’s neck as he held him in place.  
  
Kurt made a small noise deep in his throat at the movement and instead of pulling away he kissed back, pushing forward into the kiss. It wasn’t gentle, but it was laced with something new in the breath that Kurt sighed into Blaine’s mouth, the way his tongue flicked out teasingly into Blaine’s mouth, only to pull back and allow Blaine’s to chase it needily, moaning softly at each point of contact.  
  
The snowy parking lot was unforgotten, and after a moment Kurt pulled his head back, catching on Blaine’s bottom lip with his teeth as he went, laughing warmly as the action made Blaine groan and attempt to follow Kurt’s mouth. “Tease,” Kurt muttered when Blaine gave up with a grunt of dissatisfaction.  
  
“ _I’m_ the tease?” Blaine stammered incredulously, his voice almost an octave lower.  
  
“Yeah, telling me you won’t put out and then trying to make out with me in the parking lot of Lima’s only supermarket,” Kurt laughed, pursing his lips disapprovingly.  
  
“Oh, right, about that,” Blaine started, as though remembering something. “Based on the evening and the confirmation of the belief that I do, in fact, like you, and the fact that we’ve already had sex, I’ve decided to withdraw my previous statement.”  
  
Kurt raised an eyebrow, shaking his head as he listened to the wordy proclamation. He laughed, shaking his head as Blaine’s manner of speech continued to flow as it had when he’d been speaking “scientifically,” but he paused, his head tilting with interest when he gauged what Blaine was inferring.  
  
“Well,” he murmured, his gaze flickering down to Blaine’s lips. “First of all, good, because that just means you have excellent taste.” His spoke softly, not quite like he was in a daze, but as though he couldn’t quite process fully what Blaine meant. His eyes flickered between Blaine’s eyes and lips, each returning gaze darker and more heated. “Second of all,” he continued, stepping back from Blaine’s space, his eyebrow still raised, “What the hell are we still doing here, then?”  
  
Blaine shrugged and started to make some comment about the necessity of turning Lima into a gay Mecca but Kurt had already turned around, tugging Blaine forward by the pull of their joined hands and Blaine laughed, taking two large steps forward to keep up with Kurt as the boy, with the brightest hint of laughter in his movements, started pulling them toward Blaine’s car.  
  
“Also, I don’t know if you know this about me,” Kurt called back, his voice carrying easily over the distance created by their extended arms, “But I happen to have pretty excellent taste as well.”  
  
He was mid-step when he slowed ever so slightly to glance over his shoulder and winked, starting in surprise when Blaine took the opportunity to quicken his pace and whirl Kurt around so that they were facing each other, their bodies colliding hard as Blaine growled playfully in Kurt’s ear, “Oh, you do, do you?”  
  
“Eh, can’t complain,” Kurt shrugged, giggling (actually _giggling_ ) when the fingers of Blaine’s free hand danced lightly up and down his side, his other hand still connected with Kurt’s.  
  
He writhed away from the motion, threading his hand through Blaine’s hair to press their mouths together. Blaine let out a groan almost before the contact even occurred, his fingers stilling and his hand sliding across the thick wool of the coat until his entire arm was wound around Kurt’s back, pulling the boy closer to leave not even a millimeter of space between the clothes that clung to their bodies. Kurt gasped into his mouth, the stiffness in his limbs at the surprise contact falling away as he melted into the embrace, his arm winding around Blaine’s neck in an attempt to bring them closer still as Blaine’s tongue chased the inhalation of air into Kurt’s mouth.  
  
Blaine didn’t count the minutes that they spent wrapped up tightly, their lungs burning from the cold they inhaled roughly through their noses, mixing with the warm pulse of feeling that would grow within him, starting in the center of his chest and spilling through his body with each little whine that escaped Kurt’s lips or each swipe of Kurt’s tongue against his own.  
  
“Christ, Hummel, get a room and stop fucking up the family friendly atmosphere.”  
  
Kurt froze almost instantly, the smooth lines of his body turning into harsh angles as he broke away from the kiss, his eyes closed and lashes fluttering near Blaine’s. He breathed harshly, frozen in place as he tried to regain control of his lungs. Blaine could feel each breath, the press of Kurt’s chest against his own at each inhale, the absence of contact with each exhale.  
  
His eyes fluttered open when he felt Kurt move, the arm wound around his neck dropping away as Kurt turned, his eyes narrowed, to take in the intrusion to their intimacy. He inhaled sharply, almost like a hiss before the fingers that had been so long intertwined with Blaine’s fell away and Kurt stepped forward, his posture stiffening to make him look taller, his face transforming into one of haughty smugness as he stepped forward toward the small cluster of football players, the movement half-blocking Blaine from them.  
  
“Family friendly, huh?” Kurt snorted and Blaine was startled by the transformation, how quickly Kurt went from loose and gentle to intimidating and smug. “Is that why you’re here, fucking about, Azimio?”  
  
The boy who’d spoken seemed to falter from the dominance in his voice when Kurt turned his attention to them, but he stood his ground. His posse eyed each other warily. “Careful, Hummel, there might be children around. Don’t want them picking up any of the fairy dust you and your new fuck buddy are sprinkling around.”  
  
Something angry flared through Blaine and he made to step forward, but instead he collided with the flat palm of Kurt’s hand, which had flown up almost as soon as the words had been uttered. It pressed flat against the center of Blaine’s chest, the fingers flexing as a warning to stay back.  
  
“Speaking of children, isn’t it past your bedtime, Azimio?” Kurt sneered, his voice sharp.  
  
Azimio’s eyes narrowed at the jab, though for a moment he looked a little torn as to what he should do next. His eyes darted between Kurt and Blaine, glittering with that sort of look that popular kids seemed to acquire when they thought they were all that. He took a step forward and appraised Kurt as though he were nothing. “Watch it, Hummel.”  
  
Kurt snorted in amusement. “Shove off, Azimio, or do I have to remind you of what happens when you mess with me?”  
  
Azimio balked and the group behind him shifted nervously in unison. Kurt smirked at them, his eyes glittering with that strange sense of power that he’d had for so long when he’d been coming to the bar. He looked victorious and like the self-proclaimed badass that rumors had him for, but when someone else spoke up, the look disappeared as quickly as it had come, like smoke blown away by the wind.  
  
“Yeah, Azimio, let the kid have his date.”  
  
Kurt balked and his entire countenance shifted, stiffening further, but in such a way that Blaine was certain that if Kurt had ears they would have flattened down on his head. He stood his ground, but something in his breathing stilted, something faltering in his throat as he swallowed. His gaze flew to the boy that was walking over from a different direction than the rest of the group, easing himself to the front to group. Blaine let out a small noise of protest as Kurt’s fingers curled hard into the fabric of Blaine’s coat and he took a step to the side, as though to place more of himself between Blaine and the new intruder.  
  
Blaine realized then that this was the first time he was seeing a new expression in Kurt.  
  
That this was the first time he’d seen something like fear freezing the muscles of Kurt’s body.  
  
The new arrival seemed to notice this too and he smirked, his expression wholly free of the wariness that the rest of the group was shrouded in. “‘Sup, Kurt. This your boyfriend? Didn’t think you had it in you.”  
  
“Fuck off, Karofsky,” Kurt spat out, and Blaine’s eyes widened. He looked at the boy in front of him, his mind flooded with Rachel’s words from that evening at the Lima Bean and he tried to make his mind work properly, tried to figure out what it was about the stocky football player that differentiated him from the group. There was nothing remarkable in his looks; he had that sort of countenance that might be attributed to a teddy-bear type, if not for the look in his eyes  
  
Karofsky laughed, tilting his head to observe Kurt with a smug look. He paused before he spoke, taking a step forward. Kurt twitched slightly, as though fighting the instinct to step back and back down. “Oh . . . is that a no?” Karofsky muttered thoughtfully, ignoring the half-hearted whispers from his group not to push. “Huh . . .” He continued, his gaze flickering across Kurt’s face as he took another step until he was barely half a foot from Kurt. Kurt froze, his body poised for action, but he didn’t move. “In that case, funny. . . .” Karofsky said and Kurt’s hand flexed against Blaine’s chest as the jock lowered his head close to Kurt’s ear and murmured, just loud enough for Blaine to hear, “I didn’t know it’d gotten so expensive to get you down on your knees.”  
  
Kurt started and almost as instantly as he gave into the need to fall a step back the grip of his hand loosened and fell away from Blaine’s chest, allowing the area to again be filled with the chill of the outside air.  
  
Almost as startling as the loss of contact was the amount of pure hatred that Blaine saw burning in Kurt’s eyes as he looked at the football player. When he spoke, his voice was rough and controlled and laced with more venom than Blaine had ever heard before. “Back off, David,” he spat out, “if you know what’s good for you.”  
  
Karofsky looked taken aback for a moment, his head turning to look at the group behind him for a moment as he regained his composure. “Or what, Hummel?” he sneered, turning back. “You’ll tell them? Like they’d believe you anyway.”  
  
Kurt swallowed and something in him deflated and he simply shook his head. Blaine tried to work his way around all the chaos in his own head or the strange, sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach. Because he had never seen Kurt at a loss for words or without a biting remark.  
  
Apparently neither had the group and they looked at Karofsky with a strange sort of wonder, trying to figure out what he’d whispered in Kurt’s ear in order to subdue him. Karofsky in turn narrowed his gaze smugly and started to walk toward Kurt again, angling his body to just brush past him. “Well, enjoy your evening, boys.”  
  
He paused for a moment, turning his full attention to Blaine for a moment as he looked him up and down, arching an eyebrow before he said, “Make sure he gives you your money’s worth,” with a smirk and continued walking. The herd of jocks followed quickly, all avoiding contact with Kurt except for one at the very end of the group, who seemed to work up the courage to walk close by so that his shoulder collided with Kurt’s, jostling the still boy.  
  
When they were gone it was as though something unblocked in Blaine’s mind, that inhibition that kept flashing back to the night of Sadie Hawkins vanishing and his limbs felt loose again. He breathed in the cold air, letting it pass through his dry lips and chill his lungs. He looked at Kurt, his brow furrowed as concern stirred in the pit of his stomach, something of an old, familiar flame that just smoldered whenever just that little bit of Kurt’s past was revealed.  
  
Kurt didn’t move, his chest heaving as he stared off into the empty space that had just moments before been occupied by the mob. His only movements were the clenching of his fists and the fluttering of his eyelashes as he tried to blink away the emotion in his eyes.  
  
“Kurt?” Blaine murmured softly, taking a step toward him, resisting the urge of shattering the ice that had formed around the warm countenance of the boy he’d been with just moments before. Kurt didn’t move, his jaw stiff and the line of his mouth impossibly straight. Blaine repeated the name, his hand reaching out to graze the stiff shoulder, but almost as soon as contact was made Kurt jerked his arm away, rounding on Blaine with an angry snarl of, “Don’t touch me, Anderson!”  
  
Blaine started, something of a panic, of a pulsing rhythm of _no crap no_ flooding through him at the anger in Kurt’s voice. “Kurt,” he murmured, trying to sooth the boy, reaching out again before the boy with snowflakes on his eyelashes disappeared with the wind.  
  
Kurt wrenched his entire body away from the touch, his face twisted in an angry expression, but it was the utter _betrayal_ swimming on the liquid of his eyes that jolted through Blaine as though he’d been stabbed. “I’m not for sale, Anderson!” Kurt growled loudly, his chest heaving, before he turned around and stalked off toward Blaine’s car, every inch of him stiff and closed off like medieval armor.  
  
“No,” Blaine whispered, almost collapsing under the weight of everything coming together. The whispered words and the ones directed at himself and his own, his own _stupid_ words from before. The ones that had been a lashing out and that weren’t supposed to be remembered for this long. Weren’t supposed to still hurt.  
  
But just as the despair of defeat dropped down on him like the weight of the world, he was suddenly filled with something like _anger_ , both at Kurt and at himself, and he found his feet moving before he could process what he was going to say. He found himself running after Kurt, reaching the boy just as he was opening the passenger door of his car and slamming it shut with such violence that if Kurt were anyone else he would have jumped half a foot in the air.  
  
As it was, Kurt jerked his hands away from the metal frame just in time and he whirled his body around to face Blaine with an angry snarl of, “Let me in the fucking car, Anderson.”  
  
“Who is he, Kurt?” Blaine replied, trying to keep his voice level, but it shook. Kurt made a motion to open the door again, but Blaine slammed it shut, repeating his question louder.  
  
“Why?” Kurt yelled, stepping away from the car and flinging his hands into the air. “Why do you always pretend to care?”  
  
“Who is he?”  
  
Kurt rolled his eyes, the movement exaggerated in his anger. “Why, you decided you’re into that? Or maybe you want a threesome, though that’ll probably cost you more than a cheap dinner in a supermarket!”  
  
“Kurt, stop—”  
  
“Why should I! Why should I have to stand here looking at you look at _me_ like it sucks that things get screwed up? Is it to make you feel better about the fact that you want to fuck some cheap whore?” Kurt yelled, his voice breaking ever so slightly, like he was on the verge of tears. “Because if you want to fuck me clearly you can do so for free!”  
Blaine clenched his teeth, resisting the urge to do this gently because somehow that continued to get him nowhere. “You know that’s not true.”  
  
Kurt snorted, both his hands flying through his hair as he turned around, all anger and restless energy. “Bullshit. You made it clear from the start what you think about me, so just stop with the fucking _charade_!”  
  
“Who is he, Kurt?” Blaine repeated again, his voice softer, counting to ten as he inhaled, again as he let his breath swirl on the air in front of him.  
  
“God, he’s no one! Why the fuck does it even matter!” Kurt groaned and something in him seemed to snap, like the mind that had so quickly jumped to the conclusion that he was in fact worthless seemed to also decide that there was less danger in getting hurt if he didn’t try to force his way into the car. He shook his head, his hands forming into fists as they dropped to his side and he turned to stalk off through the rows of cars.  
  
“Only because I’m trying to figure out who the fuck he is to you that you trust him more than you trust me!” Blaine yelled after the retreating body, not even finding it in himself to feel that spark of satisfaction when Kurt froze. Blaine shook his head, his gaze falling on the silver glow of the car. “You know what,” he muttered, something in his chest clenching, but he refused to let it stop the words from spilling out. “You’re right. This is pointless.”  
  
He could see Kurt’s stuttered inhale in the movement of his back, his coat clinging to his shoulder blades possessively as he turned around to look at Blaine with an unreadable expression.  
  
“Because honestly, Kurt?” Blaine continued, doing nothing to stop the weariness in his voice. “You’ve given me very little reason to trust you, yet here I am. But if you don’t trust me then we’re simply wasting our time.”  
  
The air from Kurt’s lungs emerged from his lips in a short burst and his mouth opened, the anger and betrayal that had made up his expression merged into one that was a little disbelieving, a little hopeless, as though he didn’t quite believe the words that were coming from Blaine were real.  
  
Blaine shook his head, his hand falling from the top corner of the passenger door to the handle, popping it open before letting his fingers fall away from the icy metal. “Get in. I’ll take you home,” he muttered, turning his back on the boy and starting to make his way around to the other side of the car.  
  
Kurt shook his head and took a step forward, his change in countenance startling. “I . . . my bike is at Breadstix,” he said softly, his gaze flickering rapidly between the open door and Blaine, half-blocked by the car.  
  
Blaine snorted. There it was again, that rapid hiding-off of the parts that were most important to making up Kurt and he wondered why he hadn’t taken heed of it before. Why he hadn’t realized how one-sided the trust seemed to be. “Then I’ll take you to the fucking restaurant,” he snapped before dropping down into the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut.  
  
He waited for a moment for the other body to slide into the seat beside him, but when it remained empty he turned his gaze to the outside world, where Kurt was still standing in the cold, his shoulders covered with a soft layer of falling snow, as though he were a statue. His gaze was directed at the door, eyes narrowed but his expression indecipherable.  
  
“Let’s go, Hummel,” Blaine groaned. “You were in such a hurry before.”  
  
“You,” Kurt breathed out, his voice accusatory and still sprinkled with anger, but Blaine couldn’t be sure anymore at what the anger was directed. “You said I had to be the one to walk away.”  
  
Blaine laughed, shaking his head before turning his gaze back onto Kurt. “Wasn’t that what you were just trying to do?”  
  
Kurt balked, his eyes widening as he stared at Blaine, scanning his face even in the distance, but the onslaught of everything that had occurred in the parking lot had exhausted Blaine and he didn’t have the patience to allow Kurt to read him. He turned his face away from the light of the streetlamps, jamming the key into the ignition and bringing the vehicle to life before simply leaning his head back, his eyes closed, and waiting.  
  
That’s what he was doing. Waiting. Always just fucking _waiting_.  
  
He didn’t move until there was the shift of weight over the leather material of the passenger seat and the quiet click of the door being pulled shut, at which he simply directed his gaze at the road, ignoring the boy beside him, and pulled out of the parking lot.  



	17. Chapter 17

_I guess that I, I just thought maybe we could find new ways to fall apart._  
  
The car ride back to Breadstix was quiet, but it wasn’t silent.  
  
Blaine kept his eyes fixed to the road, his entire attention focused on not focusing on Kurt. He licked his lips and narrowed his eyes, as though that would improve his concentration on the patch of road before him. Beside him, Kurt sat in silence, the only sound emitting from his person the rustle of clothes when he shifted in the seat and the forced slowness of his breathing.  
  
In the background, the radio played quietly, a quiet buzz of white noise, barely discernible unless one was listening.  
  
Blaine didn’t like silence, not completely. Even when he had no interest in listening to it, the radio would be playing or the television would be on in the background or he’d be working on a song, the vibrations of his guitar echoing throughout the room. Silence was . . . drowning. Silence gave far too much reign for thought to roam free, to venture into crevices and compartments that would be otherwise left alone. That one would prefer to be left alone. With outside noise there was at least the chance that focus might be directed elsewhere, somewhere that was less suffocating and dangerous.  
  
When he’d started the car and the music came on, Kurt had made a motion, small and barely visible, like he wanted to turn the music off, but action didn’t seem to be correlated with thought and he contented himself with sitting quietly on his side of the car, his eyes directed out the window at the passing darkness of landscape, lost in his own thoughts.  
  
Blaine didn’t question them. He simply focused on the road, on the methodical swish of his windshield wipers.  
  
He focused on songs when they transitioned, more so than when they were playing out. It was because of this that his focus couldn’t help drifting to Kurt’s subtle movements. So it surprised him, with the dramatic change from Katy Perry to Whitney Houston, that somewhere along the way Kurt’s movements stopped.  
  
Blaine didn’t know why he thought it was important (he’d always thought details important, he supposed) but he felt the incredible urge then to turn and look at Kurt. From the corner of his eye he could see Kurt looking at the radio, his expression indiscernible in the darkness of the car. Only his eyes were lit up, sparking lightly in the light reflected off the rearview mirror when he leaned forward, the motion momentary before he fell back with an exhale, as though something about the situation was absurd. Blaine looked quickly back toward the road when he saw Kurt moving, his head turning to gaze directly at Blaine for the first time since before he’d gotten into the car.  
  
Blaine could feel his gaze, controlled and perfectly still, his breathing in time with the song, as though he were using it as grounding. Blaine kept his eyes fixed firmly on the road even after he felt Kurt’s eyes abandoning him in favor of the darkness outside of the car. There was something of an alertness, of a perfect stillness in Kurt as he gazed out the window, his face set, even as his fingers tapped out the beat of the song. Blaine didn’t know what to expect of it and it put him completely on edge.  
  
He was grateful when he pulled into the parking lot of Breadstix and shut off the engine. It was almost midnight and the only light illuminating the building, whether it be from the inside or out, was the warm glow of the lampposts lighting the parking lot. He drove the car into the parking spot beside Kurt’s motorbike, the lone vehicle in the lot and cut the engine, melting back into his seat with a sigh and waiting.  
Kurt didn’t move.  
  
“We’re here,” Blaine announced unnecessarily, trying to keep his annoyance out of his voice.  
  
“My mother died when I was eight,” Kurt said suddenly, so quickly and abruptly that he startled Blaine into looking directly at him. Blaine’s eyes swept over the curve of Kurt’s profile as the boy looked straight ahead, his eyes glowing with a mesmerizing mix of their natural blue and the gold of the light from the streetlamps outside.  
  
Blaine opened his mouth to say something, but as though Kurt had been waiting for it, he jumped in again, speaking quickly to the droplets of water on the windshield, formed from melting snowflakes. “And like . . . I don’t remember her very well, but my dad and I, we moved on. It’s not like she was forgotten. My dad used to tell me about how on nights when it would thunderstorm I would run through the house and go into their bedroom looking for her, but her side of the bed was always empty and that would always remind us and we would huddle together on her side of the bed, as though it would somehow fill the void. But my dad and I . . . God knows we didn’t understand each other for a really long time—well, I think somehow he always seemed to understand me, come to think of it—we got on. We were there for each other, each to keep the other from losing it.”  
  
“Why are you telling me this Kurt?” Blaine muttered, watching him carefully.  
  
Kurt shook his head angrily and turned halfway in his seat to look at Blaine, his gaze hard and pleading. “Will you just sit and listen to me? For five minutes. Can you do that?”  
  
“Kurt—”  
  
“You wanted me to talk, so let me talk and just _listen_ ,” Kurt repeated, his voice low but there was a waver in it, like the vibration dying out of a guitar string. It was that tremor, barely audible, that seemed to catch Blaine’s attention and he fell silent again, turning in his seat so that his back was leaning against the door and he was facing Kurt.  
  
Kurt started at the movement, his eyes widening, as though he hadn’t quite expected Blaine’s full attention. He cleared his throat lightly, ducking his head. “My dad was everything to me, you know. He was one of the few people that accepted the person that I was with absolutely no qualms or protest or anything, even though it took me a short, albeit successful, stint as McKinley’s star kicker and making out with Brittany Pearce to realize it.” He paused, glancing at Blaine as though expecting some sort of interruption, but apart from tilting his head and raising his eyebrows curiously, Blaine did nothing.  
  
“So . . . umm . . . I don’t know,” Kurt started, but as the words left his mouth and he squeezed his eyes shut, his lips flattening out into a straight line as his head fell back with a thud against the window. Blaine swallowed, his gaze directed toward the movement of Kurt’s chest as the boy breathed in and out. “Shit, I mean . . .” Kurt shook his head again as his eyes opened slowly, this time directed at the patterns of light on the ceiling, as though looking anywhere but at Blaine would make the talking come easier. “When my dad died, I don’t think I was prepared for it. For how easily things could fall apart when there was no one there to hold you together. Finn and Carole, they . . . they tried, I think but . . . we found a ring, you know,” Kurt trailed off suddenly, his voice losing some of its volume and smoothness. Kurt swallowed, the loudness of the motion echoing through the car. “He was . . . he was going to ask her to marry him and you’d think that would make things okay, but somehow, it didn’t.”  
  
Blaine frowned, but didn’t say anything, attempting to calm the firing of his thoughts as Kurt paused again, running his hand through the hair that hadn’t been perfectly coiffed for most of the night. “She wanted to take me in, you know. She would have gladly and I think if my dad had lived I would have wanted nothing more than for him to marry her but somehow . . . it felt like everything that I’ve come to accept as family was being taken away and replaced and if I moved in with them it would be like _my_ family was not only gone, but being erased from the slate that was my life. And I . . . I _panicked_ and I ran. I’ve always wanted to get out of this stupid ass town and I didn’t know what else to do so I just . . . I don’t know, I just gave up on staying and I tried to go but I had no money and . . . shit,” Kurt groaned, messing up his hair further as he stopped again, taking a deep breath. “I was just overtaken by this stupid idea of robbing an ATM and I . . . I don’t even know where it came from, but it’s like there was no one to stop me and so why not, you know? Actually, Noah stopped me and he ended up in jouvie because of it instead of me.  
  
“But I just . . . I’d never lost control like that before and I just didn’t know what to do and when those assholes cornered me out by the dumpsters, like they had all of freshman year, all I could think was what my dad had once told me, back when he was getting anonymous phone calls from people who didn’t even know me, but decided they had a problem with the fact that I was gay,” Kurt mumbled, his words running together ever so slightly as he spoke quicker, as though to spit out the reminiscing of an unpleasant past, like poison drawn from a wound. “ ‘No one pushes the Hummels around,’ and so I just . . . moved, knowing the last thing that I wanted, especially then, after just being constantly beaten down, was to end up in that fucking dumpster again. Like if I ended up in there again, I wouldn’t have the strength to climb back out and so I just . . . lost control. The only thing I could remember from that moment was Coach Beiste and Coach Sylvester holding me back from the two or three guys that I hadn’t managed to knock out cold and . . . it fucking terrified me, you know? Just losing control like that because I had the one thing that I’d ever truly, unwaveringly believed in just torn away from me and . . . I realized I couldn’t let it happen again. And then I might never get out. I’m stuck here as a ward of the state but I turn eighteen in a couple of weeks and I can leave but for now. I don’t let myself get close to people because it’ll just end up hurting. And so after jouvie I just . . . I lived, by myself if necessary, and there was . . . I was okay. I got by and I counted down the days to when I’d just be able to get on a train or a bus or anything and just escape. And then you had to come along and just fuck everything up.”  
  
“I _what_?” Blaine exclaimed, sitting up in his seat and staring at Kurt, forgetting his unspoken agreement to allow Kurt to speak without interruption. His incredulity must have shown on his face, or Kurt must have been expecting his reaction, for he turned his gaze from the ceiling onto Blaine and laughed, relaxing backward ever so slightly into the car door he was leaning against. It seemed like the first sign of the boy that had been at ease in his own skin back at the supermarket and it had that intoxicating, mesmerizing effect that Kurt would always have on Blaine whenever he got that way. Whenever he just let himself go.  
  
Kurt chuckled softly, tilting his head in a way that exposed his jaw line to the tiniest portion of lamplight streaming in through the windshield. “You fucked everything up,” he repeated slowly, licking his lips. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it after a moment without saying anything. The sparkle in his eyes faded ever so slightly and he looked at Blaine a little sadly; not as though he regretted the fact of his statement, but more like he was quieted by the fact that there was anything to fuck up. “It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t a _good_ thing, by certain standards, but I got by. I was getting by, keeping out of trouble, biding my time until I could just get out and then . . .” He laughed again. “Then I decided that it would be a good idea to get into the pants of the bartender singing decent covers of bad pop songs.”  
  
“Hey,” Blaine muttered softly.  
  
Kurt smiled weakly, pursing his lips ever so slightly. “I . . . I made a mistake then. For months I didn’t let myself get close to anyone, because I . . . I _couldn’t_ , for my own sake. But you . . . you have this annoying habit of just getting under my skin and . . .”  
Blaine frowned, tilting his head curiously as Kurt seemed to grow frustrated with his own words, stopping his speech eventually rather than continuing to stumble over it without fully being able to realize what he wanted to say. Like he’d reached a hurdle that he didn’t quite have the courage to leap over and Blaine wanted to help him, but he felt like he couldn’t. Like he’d either have to wait for Kurt to get a running start or he would just have to leave it alone.  
  
There were hands in hair again, a habit that Kurt normally beat himself up about, and fingers rubbing eyes. “I trust you, you know. I don’t trust a lot of people and I definitely don’t trust Karofsky. It’s just sometimes . . . you hear certain things about yourself but the more they’re said, the more you start to wonder whether or not they’re true. But I do trust you,  
  
“And that’s the problem. It shouldn’t be but . . . You . . . _terrify_ me. You know the night I showed up at your apartment? And I told you you remind me of my dad?” Kurt asked, and Blaine was startled by the sudden desperation etched into his voice and he looked up to see Kurt staring at him with shimmering eyes, his gaze direct and hard, but like it was hinging on every ounce of vulnerability he was willing to display. Blaine nodded. “I . . . You make me want to . . . With you, I . . . Fuck,” Kurt groaned again. “I trust you and I don’t know if it’s you or the fact that I was too stubborn to give it up and let you go, but somehow it happened that when there’s shit going on you’re the first person I think of, like you might be the one that’s supposed to fix things. And I . . . I’m afraid that if I let myself get closer to you, that I won’t be able to handle it when things fall apart.” Kurt swallowed and his mouth flattened into an impossibly thin line, like he was trying to create as small a medium through which his emotions could spill over. “And that it’ll end up being like before. Which is why I . . . said that stuff to Matt. And just now . . .  
  
“I trust you,” he interrupted himself, looking at Blaine imploringly, as though he hoped to beat the truth of the statement into Blaine with his gaze. “And I’m afraid that you’re going to prove to me what a mistake that is.”  
  
Blaine’s eyebrows furrowed together, the weight of the statement pinning him to the interior of the door of his vehicle, and he didn’t realize that he hadn’t made a response until Kurt muttered softly, “I’m done. You can talk now or whatever.”  
  
Blaine exhaled softly at the apologetic tone, still trying to organize his thoughts into something conclusive to say but there was suddenly so much riding on a single outcome, on one course of action and he wasn’t sure he knew what to do with it. Wasn’t entirely certain what he was supposed to make of the unidentifiable feeling coursing through his veins to the steady, albeit heightened, beat of his heart. But the exhaustion, the strain on his nerves seemed to be the only thing that prompted his next words.  
  
“We . . . we can’t keep doing this, Kurt,” he said finally and when he looked up, Kurt looked like Blaine had ripped his heart out and stabbed it with a knife. His eyes and mouth opened in tandem as he drew in a quick breath, holding it in as though to control himself.  
  
“But I . . .” he exhaled in disbelief, widened eyes fluttering shut repeatedly as he tried to find a bodily action that would control whatever reaction exploded in him. “I just said . . . I fucking sat here and I talked and you . . . I—”  
  
He cut himself off as his entire body stiffened in surprise as Blaine leaned forward to quiet him, one hand gliding gently along his jaw as he cut off the stream of words by pressing his lips gently against Kurt’s. He smiled slightly against Kurt’s lips at the momentary lack of response, adding pressure gently until Kurt melted forward with a soft sound, barely reciprocating before Blaine pulled away just far enough to look directly at Kurt.  
  
“Kurt,” he breathed out gently. Kurt seemed to be steeling himself for whatever he was expecting from Blaine, his eyes a startling combination of defensiveness and desperation as he gazed at Blaine. Blaine chuckled softly, glancing down at where his hand had landed on Kurt’s shoulder. “Sorry, that was terrible wording. I just . . . this back and forth . . . this whole thing where I try to talk to you and you resist and then one of us is pushed to a breaking point and only when shit starts to fall apart do you give in. I’m tired of it. Aren’t you exhausted?”  
  
Kurt exhaled, his shoulders falling slightly. Blaine tilted his head, gazing at him, whatever annoyance or confusion he’d had earlier that night fading away. “Kurt . . . I wasn’t lying when I told you that I trusted you. I trust you despite my better judgment and I’m here, Kurt.” Kurt looked up, his face scrunched up. “I’m here and I’ve been here, despite the fact that my first words to you were essentially along the lines of, ‘Fuck off, asshole.’”  
  
Kurt snorted, shaking his head and Blaine felt like he was knocking down walls again.  
  
Blaine pursed his lips, his eyebrows knitting together affectionately as the tension in the air around them seemed to melt away, leaking out through the heating vents and dispersing into the air outside the car. “Kurt . . . I’m here,” Blaine repeated, leaning forward so that he could gaze directly into Kurt’s eyes. “And I had no plans to go anywhere, but Kurt, this isn’t going to work if it’s going to keep going like this. I’m in this, but unless you’re all in and actually talk to me, this isn’t going to work.”  
Kurt nodded quickly, as though if he thought he hesitated Blaine would kick him out of the car if he kept hesitating. “I told you—”  
  
“I know,” Blaine reassured, allowing the corners of his mouth to curl up toward his eyes.  
  
“I’m not very good at talking to people,” Kurt admitted quietly, leaning back in his seat so that Blaine’s hand slid off his shoulder and down his arm, pulled downward by the force of gravity.  
  
“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Blaine laughed, giving Kurt a look that caused the latter to snort loudly again, the sound dissolving into a low rumbling laugh as he leaned his head against the door, his eyes scrunched up in amusement. “Kurt?”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Tell me something?”  
  
Almost instantly Kurt’s laughter died and his gaze flew to Blaine so quickly that Blaine had to lean back from the intensity of the gaze. Kurt shook his head, his gaze growing so serious that even some of the light seemed to dim from his eyes as he looked at Blaine. “Don’t—”  
  
Blaine groaned. “See, this is exactly what I’m talking about.”  
  
Kurt shook his head. He looked understanding, but there was something desperately entreating in his voice as he spoke, as though there was nothing he wished to disclose more, if not for whatever was preventing him. “No, I know what you’re going to ask. You’re going to ask me who Karofsky is and, honestly, Blaine, he’s no one. He’s just some football player.”  
  
“Except he’s not. So what makes him special?”  
  
“I can’t tell you.”  
  
“Kurt—”  
  
Kurt sighed and leaned forward, pressing two fingers gently against Blaine’s mouth. “Blaine,” he murmured and even though the name had been uttered before throughout the conversation, the smooth way it seemed to roll off Kurt’s tongue stunned Blaine into silence. “I can’t tell you. And that has nothing to do with you. I . . . believe it or not, I have some semblance of a moral code and if I told you the reason for the dynamic between me and Karofsky, I would be violating my own beliefs and that’s the last thing I’m going to do.”  
  
Blaine pursed his lips against the smooth skin of Kurt’s fingers before curling his own around Kurt’s wrist and pulling them away. “I’m not sure I understand,” he muttered.  
  
Kurt sighed. “I just . . . It’s not about you or me or him. It’s just not my secret to tell. You said you trust me?”  
  
Blaine looked doubtful and tried to keep his brain from forming a million scenarios about what could possibly exist between Kurt and the one jock that didn’t seem to be afraid of him. “I do trust you.”  
  
“Then understand me,” Kurt begged, his tone of voice drowning in that same, strange explosion of words that had driven him to that point; the jolt of courage to not only save himself from drowning, but to just allow himself to breath once the air was capable of penetrating his lungs.  
  
Blaine simply looked at him, feeling Kurt’s pulse beating through the vein in his wrist where Blaine’s fingers gripped, gently but oddly grounding, like the danger of falling seemed to fall away under the wave of air that hinted that they might be allowed to float. Kurt’s eyes were wide, glistening with emotion as he continued to look unblinkingly at Blaine and the expression in them struck a chord with Blaine. He took in the slight color of Kurt’s cheeks, barely visible in the semi-darkness of the car and Kurt’s disheveled hair, beyond repair without proper products from all the times the boy had run his hands through it. At the one, jean-clad leg, bent at the knee and curled under the other from when Kurt had turned to face him. The one hand that was fiddling with a hole above his left knee and the other that had curled into a loose fist where Blaine’s hand was holding it near his own face. There was something profoundly real about the moment and made every petty word uttered and irrational decision made earlier that night seem insignificant.  
  
“Okay. If you trust me enough to be all in this with me,” he finally murmured.  
  
“I do,” Kurt answered swiftly, like the number of times that he’d repeated the sentiment was allowing him to act quicker on it each time. He seemed to realize this notion at the same time as Blaine because he grinned genuinely for the first time since they were interrupted in the parking lot and was suddenly leaning forward across the seats, free hand gripping the back of the driver’s seat for balance as he moved closer until his nose was close enough to brush against Blaine’s. He paused for a moment, like he was awaiting permission, but then he was tilting his head to overcome the nose-to-nose barrier and pressing his lips hard against Blaine’s.  
  
Blaine let him, allowed the boy to be the one to lean in and come to him, all soft curves and heavy weight, increasing in pressure as the fact that maybe it might be okay to let go of control, even if for an instant because there was a net to catch him should he fall seeped into his limbs and his resolution and pushed him forward, the pressure of his lips insistent as he pushed Blaine backward, his tongue swiping along the seam of Blaine’s mouth tantalizingly slow, flaring heat through his nerves.  
  
Kurt tried to move forward over the barrier between the seats, swearing when his elbow collided with the steering wheel. He broke away with a gasp as Blaine opened his mouth, his tongue swiping at his own lips, as though to replace the absence of Kurt’s as the boy fell back into his own seat, rubbing his elbow. “You okay?” he panted, surprised at the roughness that had already been scratched into his voice.  
  
Kurt looked up at the sound of his voice, his eyes gleaming in the lamplight and the curves of his lips tilting into a light, easy smirk. “Move your seat back,” he instructed and before Blaine could comply Kurt was leaning forward again, bracing himself with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the seat.  
  
Blaine felt his breath catch as Kurt’s breath glossed over his ear. “You trying to trick me into car sex, Hummel?”  
  
“Trick you? I thought I was being painfully obvious,” Kurt chuckled, his voice awash with that rare depth that seemed to slow Blaine’s muscles and set off cannons in his bloodstream. Blaine gasped at the tongue that lapped, like a cat’s, against his ear, brief and teasing before Kurt freed a hand to push Blaine back against the seat, leaning his entire body forward to mess with the seat adjustments near the door.  
  
Kurt braced himself with a hand on the seat next to Blaine, his fingers slipping down below Blaine’s ass as his body just fitted in the space between Blaine and the steering wheel, the heat of it seeming to simmer on the air between them, seeping through the empty spaces and making everything tingle with heaviness and anticipation. It was hard going down Blaine’s lungs and his deep inhale turned into a startled yelp as the backrest of his seat fell suddenly back, the briefest of drops before coming to a jarring halt.  
  
Kurt chuckled at the noise, his voice low and his fingers flexing slightly between the leather of the seat and the fabric of Blaine’s jeans. “Very manly.”  
  
“We’ll see who’s laughing when you attempt to climb over to my side of the car and end up setting the horn off with your ass,” Blaine retorted, eyeing Kurt as the latter paused what he was doing and looked at him. He pursed his lips and moved his hips in a light, swaying motion, drawing Blaine’s attention to the casual wag of his ass.  
  
“There’s an idea,” Kurt smirked, his eyes twinkling evilly and Blaine made a noise in his throat, his eyes widening, something which seemed to fuel whatever flame of life had sparked in Kurt, because he seemed to abandon whatever he had been trying to do in favor of quickly swinging his body over to Blaine’s side of the car, wedging himself between Blaine’s chest and the device in question.  
  
Blaine felt them inhale in unison, the pressure of their connected chests increasing as they fought for the same air, each relenting only when Blaine grabbed the back of Kurt’s head and pulled him forward, colliding their open mouths together, twisting his tongue against Kurt’s to elicit that electrifying rumble of a moan that would shoot sparks down to his very toes. He felt one of Kurt’s hands grip the curls at the base of his neck as the other pressed against his shoulder, the heat of it somehow searing and permanent like a burn.  
  
He could feel something building inside of him, that foreignly familiar feeling that seemed ever present when Kurt was involved as Kurt tried to attack from all angles, his tongue gliding fast and hard along Blaine’s before he changed tactics and pulled Blaine’s tongue into his own mouth. He sucked on it before licking hard along its underside, swallowing down Blaine’s groan before pulling back to rest his forehead against Blaine’s, his breath tickling the skin of Blaine’s nose.  
  
Blaine tilted his head to look at him, to take in the pink flush painted across his cheekbones, obvious even in the darkness and the black, hooded depth of his eyes. “Kurt,” he muttered, his voice rough.  
  
“Want you,” Kurt breathed, aligning their profiles as he eased his hips back, laughing as Blaine’s fingers twisted through his belt-loops to hold him in place, the idea of the car horn unforgotten. Instead of leaning back, though, he rotated his hips forward, grinding down against Blaine.  
  
The noise that escaped Blaine was caught somewhere between a groan and a moan, something of pure wanting and he pushed his hips up against Kurt hard, thrusting the boy upward toward the roof of the car.  
  
“Fuck,” Kurt groaned, his back arching into a perfect crescent as his head flew back, brushing against the ceiling and thrusting his bangs in his eyes. The curved line of his neck stood in stark contrast to the night, his throat illuminated, the hair in his eyes seeming to shave off the years that had been unnecessarily added to him, years that he had yet to experience. He was left looking closer to his own age, with sweeping bangs and smooth cheekbones and Blaine was struck with the hard blow that he’d never wanted anyone more.  
  
He was leaning forward to attack the perfect, milky skin, to mark Kurt with just how much Blaine wanted, so the boy would never have any more doubts, when a rap on the window startled him so much that he leapt up with a cry, falling back against the leather seat.  
  
Kurt swore loudly as the action banged his head against the ceiling and he fell forward against Blaine’s shoulder, resting his forehead momentarily against the soft material of Blaine’s coat. He twisted his body to look out the window without removing his head from Blaine’s body, snorting with laughter before moving to open a window.  
  
“Hello, officer. Nice night we’re having here.”  
  
The sight of the police office had frozen Blaine stiff, but at Kurt’s greeting the intruder’s gaze seemed to melt into something familiar and he looked between Kurt and Blaine with something akin to mild amusement. “Well, well, Mr. Hummel.”  
  
“Problem, sir?” Kurt inquired innocently and Blaine resisted the urge to giggle as Kurt’s half-hard cock continued to press into his thigh.  
  
“I think you and your . . . friend should continue your relations elsewhere, don’t you?”  
  
“No, I think we’re getting along fine, right here. But thank you,” Kurt answered cheekily, wriggling away from the punch that Blaine gave him. There was something in the easy manner that wanted to massage the tension out of Blaine’s muscles, but it was overridden by the nagging feeling that Kurt feigning innocence for an officer of the law might not lead to good things.  
  
The officer raised an eyebrow. “Tell you what Hummel. You get out of here and take a look at my car tomorrow at that shop of yours and I’ll walk away without arresting you two.”  
  
Kurt scrunched up his face. “We appreciate your business,” he said with a straight face before rolling up the window as the officer shook his head.  
  
The minute they were alone, Blaine raised his free hand to punch Kurt in the shoulder again, feeling a sense of satisfaction when Kurt jumped back, just narrowly missing the car’s horn, and flashed him a look of indignation. “What the hell, Hummel?”  
  
Kurt chuckled, gazing innocently out of the corner of his eyes at Blaine. “Whatever is the matter, Blaine?”  
  
“You trying to get us arrested?”  
  
“If I were we’d be cuffed right now,” Kurt pointed out before his eyes lit up with interest. “Now there’s an idea.”  
  
“So . . . ?”  
  
Kurt raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Friend of my dad’s,” he replied innocently, his poker face faltering as he met Blaine’s eye.  
  
They stared at each other for mere seconds before they both burst out laughing, Kurt’s head flying back with the force of his merriment as the tension seeped from Blaine, deflating his entire body and allowing him to go limbless against the seat.  
  
When his eyes opened he found Kurt with his gaze, taking in the boy’s disheveled appearance and the way his body shook as he laughed, calming slowly as the laughter died out of him and their eyes met again. There was something in him then, something new, young and inexplicably alive as he rested back on his haunches, leaning carefully against the horn, both his hands resting naturally on the curve of Blaine’s hips. He looked at Blaine and even as the laughter died out of his body, it remained in his eyes, in a twinkle that seemed to shimmer even as he remained perfectly still.  
  
“Hi,” he murmured, stirring the heavy silence slowly, like trying to move a spoon through honey.  
  
Kurt smiled at the movement, his gaze softening until it had the look of velvet, his hand running gently along Blaine’s side, underneath the unbuttoned coat. “Hi,” he responded. “You still here?”  
  
“Still here.”  



	18. Chapter 18

**From Cas** : Jesus Christ, shoot me.  
 **To Cas** : Jesus would never.  
 **From Cas** : >:|  
 **To Cas** : Okay sorry. Why do you want Jesus to shoot you?  
 **From Cas** : This class is so boring. I quit.  
 **To Cas** : It’s the first lecture of the semester.  
 **From Cas** : Yes. So obviously terrible foreshadowing for the rest of it.  
 **To Cas** : He’s just going over the syllabus.  
 **From Kurt** :: I hate you.  
 **From Cas** :: Yeah, and the rest of the semester sounds like it’s going to suck too.  
 **To Kurt** :: No, you don’t.  
 **From Kurt** :: No, I actually think I do.  
 **To Kurt** :: Damn, I knew I should have used that tape recorder the other night. You’ll just keep on denying it now.  
 **From Kurt** :: First of all, tape recorders are one step removed from sex tapes, so kinky. I like it.  
 **From Kurt** :: Second of all, I still hate you.  
 **To Kurt** :: Dare I ask why?  
 **From Kurt** :: Rachel won’t leave me alone.  
 **To Kurt** :: I’m sorry, how is that my fault?  
 **From Kurt** :: I don’t know.  
 **From Kurt** :: But it wasn’t happening before you showed up, so I blame you.  
 **From Cooper** :: Ugh this sucks.  
 **To Cooper** :: Wow, do I suddenly look like a complaint hotline?  
 **From Cooper** :: Ummm  
 **From Cooper** :: I’m not with you so I have no idea what you look like.  
 **From Cooper** :: But, umm, hi, little brother, bad day?  
 **To Cooper** :: No, sorry. You’re just the third person in the last 5 minutes to text me complaining about something.  
 **From Kurt** :: She’s eyeing me across the room with an evil glint in her eyes.  
 **From Cooper** :: Ah, I see.  
 **From Kurt** :: Like she’s going to corner me and force me to be her friend and wear matching carousel animal sweaters.  
 **To Cooper** :: So what’s your complaint, sir?  
 **From Cooper** :: Ugh nothing.  
 **From Cooper** :: Boss thinks I’ve got a know-it-all attitude and he’s decided that it would be “fun and challenging” to send me down to the jail-house to function as one of those lawyers they assign to you if you can’t afford one for a couple of weeks.  
 **To Cooper** :: Okay, first of all, he’s not wrong about the attitude problem.  
 **From Cooper** :: Ouch, little brother, you wound me.  
 **From Kurt** :: On second thought, maybe animal sweaters wouldn’t be so bad. We could wear matching ones when we go to the roller rink and the sock hop, and split ice cream sundaes at the soda shoppe.  
 **To Cooper** :: Hey, it’s true. Though I don’t see how forcing you to spend time with petty criminals and delinquents will fix it.  
 **From Cooper** :: Yes, exactly! Pass that message on, would you?  
 **From Cas** :: Why are you grinning so much? Who are you texting?  
 **From Kurt** :: Stop ignoring me!  
 **To Kurt** :: I think that sounds swell. What animal will you be wearing on your sweater?  
 **To Kurt** :: Will the species of our animals match precisely?  
 **To Kurt** :: Because if we want mating to be possible/our offspring to be fertile, they probably should, but seeing as we’re gay and producing offspring isn’t really a pressing issue, would it make that much of a difference?  
 **From Kurt** :: . . . .  
 **From Kurt** :: That’s it, I’m withholding sex.  
 **To Kurt** :: Yeah, okay. Good luck with that.  
 **From Kurt** :: Hey, I managed great that whole month or whatever that I was chasing after you.  
 **To Kurt** :: Yeah, so did I.  
 **From Kurt** :: But that was before you knew what you were missing. ;)  
 **To Kurt** :: Wait, did you not sleep with anyone the whole time you were chasing me?  
 **To Kurt** :: That’s kind of nice.  
 **From Kurt** :: Oh god, if you’re going to get sappy I’ll take my chances with Rachel.  
 **To Kurt** :: :3  
 **From Kurt** :: Oh god, stop.  
 **From Kurt** :: I’m leaving bye.  
 **From Kurt** :: If you don’t hear from me again it’s because Rachel got me and I killed myself rather than allowing those sweaters to come near me.  
 **To Kurt** :: Okay, have fun xx  
 **From Kurt** :: Did you seriously just close your text with ~kisses~ really Blaine? Are we in the eighth grade?  
 **To Kurt** :: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx  
 **From Kurt** :: . . .  
 **From Kurt** :: x  


* * *

  
_Closed for repairs and renovations until 01/13/12._  
  
Cas eyed the sign on the front door of Hampton’s and heaved a sigh. She ignored it completely and simply pushed the door open, easing herself inside. She passed by the empty coatroom into the dimly lit main area, ducking under the caution tape that Blaine had tossed about the construction site mid-dance and easing herself behind the bar.  
  
“Next week, really?” she murmured, sliding into place beside Carson as he leaned against the freshly polished wood of the bar, clipboard in hand, scanning the inventory clipped to it with pursed lips and a brow furrowed in concentration.  
  
He hummed in agreement, tongue dipping out to lick his lips as he crossed an item off.  
  
“We were supposed to open at the beginning of this week,” she accused with a smile, dropping her purse on the counter and glancing at the inventory with interest before turning her back on the room and scanning the bottles lining the shelves.  
  
“You know how it is with construction workers,” was the absentminded reply, pen scratching lightly against the fibers of paper, barely audible over the music filling the space. “That’s all right. It’s a week into the semester that kids start to get desperate for a drink,” he chuckled.  
  
Cas tilted her head, observing the way the light flickered off the bottles, slightly dusty from the winter renovations to the bar. The movement was half in agreement, half to allow the musicality of the room to collide more properly.  
  
“They sound good,” she murmured softly, watching the green of bottles and the gold of liquid arranged neatly behind the bar glowing dully, the cluster of boys with instruments on the newly constructed stage just reflected off of the mirror behind them.  
  
“Mmm,” Carson hummed in acknowledgement, crossing an item off his list before pressing a hand gently to her shoulder and disappearing into the back room.  
  
Cas sighed, feeling strangely restless and with a strange itch for the bar to just reopen so she could work again. It was a strange feeling because it wasn’t a life plan or career choice by far but, in the moment, it was something she needed. Something easy and fun and the perfect distraction when necessary.  
  
She turned as the music stopped, smiling as Blaine’s laugh replaced it, bouncing off the walls in much the same manner that the boy himself would twirl about a room when filled with nothing but radiant joy. And she didn’t know what it was, what had changed since all the drama with that Hummel boy, but she saw that side of him more now, even when he would begrudgingly consent to work the bar.  
  
But funnily enough, even though she could see that side of him more, she seemed to see _him_  less, fleeting glimpses in the library or in class or at the local Starbucks, as he sat by the window, phone in front of him and that million-watt smile gracing his face.  
  
“You guys done?” she grinned casually at the cluster of boys dragging instruments past the bar, two of which she knew by name, the third by site.  
  
“Blaine’s staying, but we’re pushing off.” Cameron, she thought his name was, answered her casually, his smile easy as he leaned against the bar and glanced over his shoulder to where Blaine had set his guitar down on a stand and had eased a stool closer to the electric keyboard. He looked at home, his gaze soft as he looked down at the keys, his fingers skimming over the surface without pressure before he pressed down, closing his eyes as the music flowed gently.  
  
Cas’s smile faltered microscopically as Blaine began to sing, his head leaning down over the keys as he pressed down with his whole body, the music filling the space in such a way that it seemed to freeze time, giving a melody of a still picture of a moment. The curves of Cas’s lips gave way to the ever so slight slackening of her mouth as she took him in, trying to remember if she’d ever seen him performing with such an intensity before.  
  
Her gaze flickered away momentarily as Cameron murmured his salutation. She smiled warmly at him as he headed out the door before grabbing a bottle of beer and slipping out from behind the bar. Her footsteps tread lightly on the floorboards, stirring up dust to cover the retreating footprints left by the band.  
  
Blaine’s eyes were still closed, his face screwed up more from the emotion that flowed through him than from the need to concentrate and he didn’t look up until he heard the scrape of a chair being pulled near the stage and the weight of Cas’s body dropping into it. His eyes snapped open and he cut himself off mid-melody as he noticed Cas leaning forward against the backrest of the chair she’d brought along with her, open bottle of beer dangling from her nimble fingers.  
  
“Cas,” he gasped, his chest still heaving from the deep breaths of air he’d been gulping as he sang, something musical still twanging through his voice.  
  
“No, don’t stop,” Cas interrupted, her eyes widening. “Shit, Blaine, that was . . . shit. I mean, not  _shit_ , but you know . . .”  
  
Blaine laughed, leaning back as far as he could in his seat without it tipping backward. He ran a hand through his curls, dislodging the minimal amounts of gel that were present in it. “I just wanted to see how it sounded. I didn’t realize anyone was here.”  
  
Cas snorted, taking a long sip of her alcohol before offering the bottle to Blaine. His phone vibrated quietly on the plastic of the electric keyboard but he simply glanced down at the text preview on his screen with a smile before giving her his attention again. “I never knew you to be shy,” she teased, taking another drink when he waved a hand in refusal.  
  
Blaine’s response was a simple shrug, a soft smile lingering in his expression after the music died down, lighting up his features and softening his persona gracefully. “I’m not,” he laughed, tilting his head to look at her fondly. “It’s just not done yet.”  
  
“It sounded great,” she reassured, leaning her elbows against the backrest of the chair, her curly hair falling over her left shoulder as she leaned her head in that direction. His phone vibrated again as Blaine beamed at the compliment, glancing down at the keyboard and pressing his fingers down in an absentminded melody. “I miss you,” she murmured.  
  
“You see me almost every day.”  
  
“Yeah, but we haven’t hung out properly since before finals,” she pointed out and he pursed his lips, nodding in acknowledgement at this conundrum. “You free tonight?”  
  
Blaine continued to play, the notes without a proper melody but flowing together better than some intricately composed symphonies. He licked his lips, his eyes rising to the ceiling thoughtfully, as though that fact would help him scan his brain better. He opened his mouth to answer but stopped himself as his phone started vibrating without end, the person trying to get a hold of him clearly not someone that was willing to be ignored. Blaine stopped playing and leaned over the keyboard to take a closer look at his phone. Cas watched as his lips turned up into a smirk and he reached for the device.  
  
“Sorry, I should,” he started, the end of his sentence falling from his lips as he glanced apologetically at Cas.  
  
“Oh, no, go ahead,” she answered in response to the unfinished question and Blaine grinned, sliding his finger across the screen and bringing his phone up to the ear. “Jesus, you’re such an attention whore,” he said automatically with a smirk, adjusting his position in the chair and crossing one leg over the other. Cas raised her eyebrow as Blaine’s grin grew as he listened to whoever was on the other end, suddenly desperate to hear both sides of the conversation.  
  
“What a drama queen, you’re not dying by the side of the road,” Blaine laughed, something fond in his voice. “Though it’s incredibly sweet that apparently I’d be the person you’d call if you were.” He flashed a quick glance at Cas, his face scrunching up as the person on the other end continued talking.  
  
“You do know by now that’s an empty threat. I distinctly remember having this discussion before.”  
  
Blaine listened attentively to the response, snickering softly and rolling his eyes every once in a while. A free hand lingered over the keys, tapping out a soft, absent-minded melody.  
  
“Wait, you’re where?” he started suddenly, hand dropping down to where his ankle was crossed over his knee, eyes widening in surprise. His gaze flew to the door just beyond Cas and, even though it’d seemed impossible, his grin widened and he stood instantly, uncrossing his legs and shifting his weight onto them in one fluid motion. “No, no, stay where you are, I’ll be right out,” he practically sang, his eyes twinkling even in the dimly lit bar as he grabbed his coat off a speaker and jumped down from the stage. He hung up the phone quickly and dropped it in his pocket, stopping his quick exit suddenly midway through passing by Cas, who simply watched him with raised eyebrows and an amused smirk. He looked like he’d forgotten that she was even in the room.  
  
“Cas,” he breathed, his face crumpling almost instantly into a perfect picture of apology. “Shit, Cas, I’m sorry, I just—”  
  
Cas feigned a look of supreme disappointment, shaking her head sternly at him as she raised the bottle of beer back to her lips. She watched seriously over the green glass as his eyebrows constricted anxiously before she could feel herself breaking and she swallowed the liquid quickly before she started laughing and simply spat it all out. “Christ, Blaine, stop looking like a wounded puppy and go meet your man.”  
  
Blaine relaxed visibly. “Yeah, okay, I . . . wait, meet my man?” he started, his eyebrows raising, looking wary of the fact that she might possess some information that he clearly hadn’t shared with anyone as of yet.  
  
Cas rolled her eyes. “Oh, honey, please, it’s completely obvious. I’m happy for you. Now go have fun,” she instructed, pointing to the door. “Be safe and all that jazz.”  
  
“Yes, mom,” Blaine simpered with a grin, backing toward the door.  
  
“And I expect you to bring him home for dinner!” she yelled after him.  
  
Blaine snorted and leaned against the bar as he reached it, glancing over his shoulder at her. “I don’t know, I’m not sure if he’s quite the meet-the-parents type,” he winked before disappearing from her view.  
  
Cas tilted her head at this parting news, folding her arms over the back of the chair she was straddling and observing the door with interest, curiously wondering whether she was meant to make the assumptions that were currently flying through her head.  


* * *

  
  
Blaine screwed up his eyes against the chill of the breeze that grazed his face as he pushed open the door to Hampton’s, pulling his scarf tighter around his neck and scanning the scattering of figures on the surrounding street for the one that had called him out into the frosty air.  
  
He frowned, a strange, empty feeling at the pit of his stomach as he scoured the street with his gaze and could not seem to find the person he was seeking. He’d just pulled his phone out when his gaze flickered to the side of the building and he felt any sense of confusion and uneasiness melt away from him and get blown away by the wind.  
  
Sticking his phone back into his coat pocket, his hands followed suit and he walked over to the lone figure with an easy swagger, flicking a stray curl out of his eyes and allowing his lips the luxury of tilting up into an easy-going smile.  
  
Kurt was leaning against the wall, looking very much like he had all those countless weeks that Blaine had seen him, though with the dash of red from the sun, setting between the various buildings of the campus, throwing crimson glow over him, which mixed with the glow of embers as he inhaled around that familiar cigarette. The pose was old, yet somehow so completely new, something newly casual and more disinterested in his surroundings lingering. He had the old leather jacket on again and Blaine could see the collar and rolled sleeves of a brown sweater peeking out from it at the collar and at the ends of his long arms.  
  
He started, looking up as Blaine approached, boots crunching on the salty sidewalk, casually whistling the melody from ‘Bad.’ His face lit up, eyes sparkling in the light that filtered in from between the buildings across the street, his cool-disinterested façade flickering like a bulb struggling to retain life. Blaine raised an eyebrow as Kurt’s grip on the cigarette seemed to immediately loosen, threatening to send it falling to the ground, half-smoked, but Kurt seemed to catch it at the last minute, turning his gaze to his hand, suddenly looking unsure as to whether he wanted to keep smoking or simply discard the cigarette.  
  
“Hi,” he murmured, glancing between the smoking item in his hand and Blaine. He momentarily adopted an anxious composure, accented with the attitude of a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar and the sight of it made Blaine laugh and without a moment of hesitation he reached Kurt in two long strides, catching the boy off-guard as his hand rose automatically to the back of Kurt’s neck and his lips sought out Kurt’s without a second thought, collapsing the boy against the wall.  
  
He didn’t really mean to press in hard at all, just something quick, easy, to let go of that old familiar twist of teenage awkwardness that was destined to accompany all developing relationships; the one that would, despite their numerous dates since the ‘Grand Confessional Speech of Epic Proportions’ (and Blaine thought that he got dramatically carried away while naming things), and countless mornings after spent cleaning come off the leather backs of his car seats, still crop up whenever he and Kurt met again. Like there was some part of Kurt that was constantly wary that one day Blaine would just not show up.  
  
So it was really meant to be nothing more than that: a warm, grounding reassurance and the quick satisfaction of an urge that had been picking at Blaine’s brain (putting it mildly) since he’d seen Kurt three days prior. But as his lips slotted perfectly against Kurt’s, that strange little feeling that he didn’t quite know if he recognized, like sitting down in a sun-warmed car in the middle of summer, stirred in his blood and he found himself pushing forward until the solidity of the wall behind Kurt became evident even in the haze that seeped into the rational portions of his brain. He wound a hand around Kurt’s waist and pulled him closer, sucking lightly on Kurt’s bottom lip as he sought more of that strange essence of Kurt that seemed to paralyze his nerves; that taste of tobacco that had once seemed familiar and the sharp smell of smoke that mixed perfectly with the clean scent of Kurt’s cologne.  
  
Kurt gasped against him at the movement, melting forward with a quiet sound, only to grunt in protest as Blaine broke away, distracted by a wolf-whistle from a passing student. He glanced over his shoulder, not moving from where he was still trying to erase all air from between Kurt and the brick wall of the bar and Kurt and himself. He caught a wink from a guy he recognized from a class and he laughed, shaking his head before he glanced at Kurt, his eyes twinkling.  
  
“Hey,” he grinned, as though the greeting was one he had ready for all his friends. “What’s up?”  
  
Kurt’s eyes were dark and alive, light in them glistening like moonlight off the sea, and at the question they grew another shade closer to midnight blue. “Damn, I have a superb answer to that particular question, but I don’t want to come off as presumptuous,” he smirked, his eyes flickering momentarily to Blaine’s lips before meeting his gaze.  
“Yeah, because being presumptuous has always been such a terrible concern of yours,” Blaine replied sarcastically. He leaned forward until his breath glossed over Kurt’s lips and any air molecule he breathed in held Kurt’s scent. “Let’s go,” he murmured teasingly, ducking away when he felt Kurt leaning into the motion.  
  
He danced away, starting to walk backwards down the street toward his apartment, grinning smugly at Kurt’s disapproving expression.  
  
Kurt raised an eyebrow, taking half a step away from the wall only to lean back casually against it. “Where do you think you’re going, Anderson?”  
  
“My apartment.”  
  
“Nuh uh, we’re going out,” Kurt grinned, something endearingly wicked in his expression as he pushed off the wall with his shoulders, hands tucked casually into the pockets of his jacket. He mimicked Blaine’s motion, swinging his hips as he took large strides backwards in the opposite direction, his eyes fixed on Blaine.  
  
Blaine’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline. “Out, you say?”  
  
Kurt hummed in response, looking satisfied when Blaine’s foot stopped midway in its backward swing and started forward again. “Yup. You and I are finally going to have some real fun.”  
  
Blaine gave him a mock pout. “But we have a ton of fun when we stay in.”  
  
“When have we ever stayed in?”  
  
“And by stay in I mean go out and end up in the back of my car,” Blaine answered, taking three successive steps forward quickly before slowing down to his casual, swinging gait.  
  
“Ah, well, there’ll be plenty of time for that, but now we’re on my turf—”  
  
“I thought we established that Columbus is my turf?”  
  
“—And there’s so much more fun to be had here,” Kurt finished with a grin, spinning gracefully around and walking normally toward the downtown area of the city, his head cocked casually upward, waiting only for a minute before he heard the thudding of a light jog and Blaine’s shoulder collided with his, the other boy’s warm breath tickling his ear.  
  
“Kurt Hummel, are you taking me  _clubbing_?”  


* * *

  
“What do you want to drink?” Kurt yelled over the music, as he pulled Blaine through the throng of bodies toward the bar. Blaine didn’t answer, split between squinting his eyes against the strobe lights and trying to make as little contact with anyone outside their party as possible. “Blaine!  
  
“Oh! Uh, nothing,” Blaine started, feeling grateful as the crowd thinned ever so slightly and they both collapsed against the colorfully lit bar.  
  
Kurt glanced at him with a grin and Blaine was startled by how the mere minutes that they’d been inside the club had already worked to dishevel his appearance. His jacket had been left in the coatroom, leaving him in a white shirt that, somehow, Blaine immediately spotted was different from the one he usually donned, the V-neck lower to expose hints of his collarbones and the material clinging to every dip and curve carved into Kurt’s torso, glowing slightly in the blacklight of the club. A lone droplet of sweat slid down the long line of his neck and his perfectly coiffed hair was mussed slightly from fighting his way through the crowds.  
  
“C’mon,” he encouraged, glancing between Blaine and the bartender.  
  
Blaine frowned anxiously, biting his lip as he glanced around the club. “No, seriously, I’m good.”  
  
Kurt’s grin faltered for a moment and he looked unsure again, like he was maybe reconsidering the idea of going out. “Blaine?”  
  
“No, it’s fine, I just don’t drink much,” Blaine reassured him, sensing the bartender moving on to more willing customers behind him.  
  
Kurt let out a short laugh, tilting his head to the side before he again allowed his gaze to rest on Blaine. “You work in a  _bar_ ,” he pointed out with a laugh, like he thought Blaine was messing with him.  
  
Blaine shifted slightly, still keeping his gaze directed out on the dance floor, like it might offer him an ample distraction. “So?” he muttered in annoyance.  
  
He waited for Kurt to come up with a clever remark, but instead Kurt was silent beside him and Blaine wrinkled his nose at Kurt’s perfect ability to draw his attention by doing nothing at all. When he finally gave into the urge to turn his head and look, he found Kurt observing him with a curious expression on his face. “What?”  
  
Kurt tilted his head, half perched on a bar stood and leaned an arm against the bar, illuminating part of his shirt in a bright pink, neon glow. “When you say you don’t drink much, do you mean you don’t drink much or not at all?”  
  
Blaine frowned at the question. “Umm . . . Not much, I guess. I haven’t in a while. I’m kind of an awful drunk,” he admitted with a laugh and Kurt smiled. Nothing shifted in his countenance, the same curious jewel glittering in his eyes.  
  
“Awful how?”  
  
Blaine shrugged, leaning his elbows back against the bar, feeling his skin tingling under Kurt’s gaze and trying to remember just how much he’d told Kurt about himself, feeling slightly hypocritical. “Well, the two times I’ve been completely wasted in my life I’ve pretty much ended up trying to make out with everyone who came near me,” he paraphrased after a moment, running his hand through the curls falling over his forehead.  
  
Beside him, he heard the light sound of Kurt’s laugh ripping through the air over the rhythmic thump of music and he turned to again look at the boy in surprise, his breath catching almost painfully at the joy and amusement glittering in Kurt’s eyes. “Blaine Anderson, a horny drunk?” he laughed. Blaine made a face at him, which seemed to dissolve Kurt into more giggles rather than dispensing with them all together and Kurt doubled over in laughter, his face turning into his hand as he leaned against the bar.  
  
Behind him, Blaine noticed (in a vast amount of satisfaction) that the guys who’d been eyeing Kurt seemed to lose interest as the boy dissolved into merriment.  
  
“Oh, come on, it’s not that funny.”  
  
“Christ, you shouldn’t have told me,” Kurt laughed, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “I just wanted to get you to loosen up and have fun, but now I desperately need to see you drunk.”  
  
“Oh, that’s nice, so I tell you about my woeful high school experiences with alcohol and you—Wait, hold on, loosen me up?” Blaine frowned, his brow furrowing in confusion.  
  
Kurt looked guilty for a minute, as though he’d been called out in his intentions. His lips curled into his mouth, around his teeth and his tongue poked out from between them tentatively as he contemplated Blaine for a moment before smiling gently. “Yeah, umm . . . yeah, I don’t know . . . I just thought you spent too much time thinking about things and planning things and that maybe tonight we could just go out and have fun. Get you to be a little less uptight,” he murmured, sounding like he was trying to convey the fact that he wasn’t, in fact, trying to be insulting.  
  
“You think I’m too uptight.”  
  
“Jesus, not uptight, but . . . I don’t know, we spent so much time dancing around this . . . thing—” Kurt waved his hand in a whirlpool-like motion between them “—and I know that was my fault too but I still think that you think too much, you know?”  
  
“You know, if I’m tight that’s probably your fault for not prepping me enough, so I think the only solution here is for us to go back to my apartment,” Blaine winked cheekily.  
  
He grinned in satisfaction as Kurt’s eyes widened briefly, glowing a strange hue of maroon from the mixture of blue in his cornea’s and the pinkish-red light from the bar. He recovered momentarily and he stared hard at Blaine, his gaze piercing through Blaine’s skin even as a satisfied smirk etched itself into Kurt’s features. “Sorry, but turning everything into a sexual innuendo is my thing,” Kurt answered, his eyes twinkling. “Since when are you the one in this relationship that’s obsessed with sex?”  
  
“What, did you think that you finally getting to have sex with me would make me less interested in it?”  
  
“Well,  _obviously_  not,” Kurt laughed teasingly and the winged creature in Blaine’s stomach fluttered momentarily. He scratched a spot on his neck just below his ear, one that his hand would always seem to find instinctively and gave Blaine another look. He turned to the bar before Blaine had time to analyze it and waved the bartender over to murmur an order quietly into the man’s ear.  
  
Blaine watched him as he did it, brow furrowed slightly as he contemplated the slim figure reclined so easily against the bar, illuminated by a halo of red light, like he had been there countless times before, ignoring the interested looks and focusing on the one person that he’d decided was worthy of his time that night and there was that paranoid itch in his brain telling him to stop imagining that tonight was different from any other night that Kurt was here alone.  
  
But then Kurt would look at him and Blaine’s heart would pound hard enough to overwhelm paranoia because it was different, of course it was. Because of speeches and promises and confessions and the way that Kurt stretched himself out, arms on bar, ass on barstool, tips of toes poised on the ground, like he was on display, but his gaze moved to no one but Blaine, filled with something deeper than the animalistic lust that Blaine had always seen.  
  
“You’re just trying to get me drunk so that I’ll have sex with you, aren’t you?” Blaine teased and that’s all it was; a light joke, easy banter because the tension couldn’t find it in itself to crawl back into his shoulders and as he glanced at the drink that Kurt was accepting.  
  
“Honey, please, we both know I don’t have to get you drunk to get you to have sex with me,” Kurt smirked.  
  
“Oh, right, sorry. So then you want to see me have sex with other people because that’s totally happening if I drink that.”  
  
“Don’t worry, I’m incredibly possessive and almost annoyingly territorial, so I’ll take care of you,” Kurt grinned. Blaine raised an eyebrow doubtfully, ignoring the strange nudge to comply just to see if it was true; to see what Kurt would do. “Won’t let you do anything stupid—unless I get to participate, that is.”  
  
Blaine pursed his lips, letting out a soft laugh at the cheeky wink Kurt threw him, thinking about . . . well,  _thinking_ , really. Thinking and Kurt. And the last time he’d done something without completely thinking, giving himself over fully to what he wanted, not what he thought he wanted. About the first time he’d done it. About Hamlet.  
  
“One drink,” he warned, because he liked the feeling of wanting more than thinking.  


* * *

  
  
“Why are you so much less drunk than me?” Blaine muttered, his breath hot against Kurt’s neck and he felt a stir of satisfaction as Kurt leaned into it instinctively.  
  
 _The last time he’d been drunk, really drunk, had been senior year of high school because, really, it didn’t seem natural for a senior to be more of an innocent flower than a freshman. And as the words innocent and flower didn’t apply to Sebastian Smythe, it didn’t seem right that they should apply to Blaine.  
  
Not that they did.  
  
But somehow boys with piercing stares seemed to come embedded with kryptonite._  
  
“You’re not that drunk.”  
  
“Doesn’t answer the question.”  
  
“Just one, huh?”  
  
Blaine laughed and gulped the drink down, feeling it burning through his veins, feeling Kurt’s gaze burning into him even through it didn’t purposefully smolder. He stood from his stool, pausing momentarily as he became aware of the way that the room seemed louder and brighter.  
  
“Dance with me.”  
  
Kurt laughed and even though his eyes were closed Blaine could see him. See him in the light feel of sweat coating the short hair at the back of his neck and in the way it mixed with the wind and the smoke and the sharp clean scent of cologne that smelled like rain water. In the way his neck stretched long and thin and smooth against Blaine’s cheek or his sweat formed a pool near his collarbone that seemed to be there only so that Blaine might move his lips to that point and swirl his tongue against alabaster skin to lap it up as he pulled Kurt closer toward him so that even in a tightly packed mass of men he would be the only one that laid a hand on Kurt.  
  
“I haven’t been drinking, silly.”  
  
“Dance with you?” Like it was an incredulous request, honestly.  
  
Blaine grinned and focused carefully on not swaying into the man next to him. “I heard you dance a mean Single Ladies.”  
  
“It’s not playing.”  
  
“Dance with me.”  
  
Blaine hummed against Kurt’s collar bone and wound an arm around the boy’s waist, pulling him closer still, feeling the muscles of his back flexing as the sweat of their shirts mixed together. He was hot—the room was boiling—and the feeling in his veins, that weird Kurt feeling that had a name that Blaine couldn’t quite remember, was back and this time it didn’t flicker but it stayed as a constant, drugging Blaine more than the alcohol in his system.  
  
“Stupid,” he muttered, thrusting his hips against the curve of Kurt’s ass. Kurt groaned, a sound lost in the music, but its vibrations rumbled through Blaine’s body at any point of contact.  
  
The hem of the damp, white shirt rode up and the skin under it was soft.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Club,” Blaine grunted, pressing his face into the crook of Kurt’s shoulder and feeling the inhalation that resulted. “Stupid. We should go.”  
  
Kurt hummed, swinging his hips loosely, the fingers of one hand back and pressing hard, minuscule points of contact into the curve of Blaine’s thigh, holding him close and burning through Blaine’s jeans. His other hand curled itself into Blaine’s curls.  
  
“What?”  
  
“We should fucking  _go_.”  



	19. Chapter 19

Blaine shifted against the warm body next to him, flexing his fingers over smooth abdomen muscles. There was a dull ache in his limbs when he opened his eyes to the darkness of the room, but it wasn’t anything unpleasant; it was something strangely agreeable—welcome, even—and it mixed well with the fading humidity of sex in the air and alcohol in his veins.

The thought of returning sobriety had him pulling away suddenly from the boy underneath him, rolling onto his back to stare up into the darkness in the direction of the ceiling. He ran his hand up through his hair as he focused carefully on the pace of his breaths, feeling them starting to waver slightly as he stared upwards and contemplated the name to the feeling stirring at the pit of his stomach, the one that hadn’t, apparently, faded away with the alcohol he’d consumed.

For, completely sober, at three in the morning, Blaine Anderson felt that he could say with absolute certainty that he was in—

He groaned suddenly and the hand in his hair fell downward toward his face, rubbing against his eyes.

It was stupid, of course it was, because looking at things objectively, it didn’t come as a complete shock at all and he couldn’t figure out why he was suddenly nervous about acknowledging it.

He turned his head and tried to make out the definite shape of Kurt lying next to him, his profile outlined by the harsh red glow of Blaine’s alarm clock on the other side of the table. He watched as Kurt gave a little sniff and shifted slightly before falling still again, the movement of his head flicking several strands of hair down over his forehead and capturing Blaine’s breath as it expanded his chest with a sudden flare of feeling.

Maybe . . . if he just analyzed it again. Just to be sure. So he didn’t tip their balance unnecessarily.

 

* * *

 

“This is the best night of my life,” Blaine muttered absently, pressing Kurt firmly against the door to his apartment complex, gripping Kurt’s earlobe in his teeth and tugging. Kurt laughed, low and rumbling and not very controlled, as his hands fumbled through Blaine’s jacket, searching for his keys. “The best night. Just want to live there.” Kurt laughed over the jingle of keys being extracted from Blaine’s coat, and the sound raised goosebumps on Blaine’s skin even in the heat that encased him. Blaine whined as Kurt turned on the spot and fiddled with the lock of the door. “Just want to live there and make art and help people.”

Kurt inhaled to continue laughing, the motion shaking his shoulders against Blaine’s chest, but he was cut off by a breathy noise as the key slipped into the lock and Blaine licked a slow, arduous path from Kurt’s earlobe to his pulse point.

“C’mon, you,” Kurt muttered, his voice somehow higher and more musical than usual. The door opened before Blaine could adjust his weight and they stumbled into the building, his arm twisting to wind around Kurt’s waist. Even through layers, the spot on his shoulder that Kurt’s hand pressed against burned pleasantly.

The minute they were in the apartment, Blaine whirled Kurt around to face him, cupping both of Kurt’s cheeks in his hands and almost smacking him in the head in his haste. Kurt started to laugh again, his eyes crinkled up in merriment, but for the second time that night Blaine cut him off, pulling him closer and pressing a hard kiss against his mouth, holding him in place as his front door clicked silently shut behind him.

Kurt reacted to the motion almost instantly, nibbling at Blaine’s bottom lip as his hands flew to the buttons of Blaine’s coat, gliding over them with immense skill and pushing the woolen material quickly off of Blaine’s shoulders.

Kurt smiled when Blaine kissed him. It was a strange thing to focus on, really, given that the scrape of Kurt’s teeth on his lips and the dipping, teasing swipes of his tongue were enough to distract anyone from thoughts other than the slow bubble of heated feeling in his blood, but Blaine loved it. Loved feeling it when Kurt couldn’t quite control it and his lips flattened against his teeth, their edges curving up toward his teeth, the dimples of his right cheek pressing against Blaine’s left. How the action seemed to sneak up on him and he couldn’t seem to stop it and he had to pull away and apply light, teasing pecks to the corners of Blaine’s lips.

It was something recent, new and easy since they’d found their delicate balance and Blaine didn’t want it to ever stop.

So he didn’t question if it was him that seemed to make Kurt so happy, if only because he didn’t want to scare him off just yet. Tip the scales.

“Bit of a déjà vu moment, don’t you think?” Kurt muttered, the fleeting contact of his lips moving to Blaine’s jaw as Blaine jerked down the zipper of Kurt’s jacket and unceremoniously wrenched off both it and the sweater beneath it, tossing it aside.

Blaine grunted in response, too focused on the movement of Kurt’s muscles below skin and shirt and he ran his hands down Kurt’s back where his shirt clung to it, sweaty from the club, sprinkled with glitter, and cool from the chill of winter outside, adhering perfectly to every curve and muscle. Kurt shivered against him slightly, his lips leaving Blaine’s jaw, his head flying back as Blaine’s hands slid lower, gliding over the dip of Kurt’s lower back, the tips of his fingers just breaching the border of his jeans.

“You know,” Kurt gasped as Blaine nudged the underside of his jaw with his nose, his lips lingering on the taunt skin. “It would be good—ah—payback if I—Christ—” he broke off with a whine as Blaine sucked lightly at his Adam’s apple.

Blaine groaned loudly as Kurt spoke, the vibrations of his throat pulsing through him and he grinned in satisfaction when Kurt’s speech cut off with a swear. “If you what, sweetheart?” he asked sweetly, the smirk evident in his voice.

Kurt growled slightly and his hands flew to Blaine’s hair, tugging his head back before smashing their lips together hard, his tongue thrusting into Blaine’s mouth, pulling back just as sharply after swallowing Blaine’s moan of surprise.

“If we continued with the déjà vu of the moment and I left you to take care of yourself and sleep it off on the couch,” Kurt grinned smugly, taking a teasing step backward, one finger pressed to the center of Blaine’s chest to keep him from following. Blaine let out a moan, grabbing Kurt’s hand and tugging it upward until it was thrown around his neck and Kurt was back up against him.

“As if you would survive in my room knowing I’m out here jerking off,” he whispered, his voice low and gruff against Kurt’s lips.

“I did last time,” Kurt mocked lightly, more air in his reply than sound.

“Last time you had the advantage of being wasted and passed out on my couch,” Blaine smirked, walking them backwards until Kurt’s knees collided with the couch and he toppled down gracefully. “Also my ex-boyfriend.”

Kurt snorted, his hand fisting in Blaine’s cardigan to pull him down. “Your ex, an advantage to me. That’s news.”

Blaine laughed, his eyes twinkling as his knees pressed in against Kurt’s sides, swaying a little. He didn’t feel sober enough to assume that he was, but the alcohol merging with his blood also didn’t make him quite as light-headed as usual, merely warming his nerves and twisting something in his stomach. He paused a minute to catch his breath, letting Kurt work the buttons of his cardigan before he shuckedit off his shoulders and tossed it aside.

He inhaled as Kurt laughed at his apparent enthusiasm, the boy’s long fingers skimming over the details of Blaine’s striped shirt. “That looked expensive, you should treat your clothes with more respect,” Kurt tutted lightly, gasping in shock as Blaine’s hands grabbed him by the wrists and pushed his arms over his head.

“Says the boy that basically owns one outfit,” Blaine purred into Kurt’s ear, his chuckle low as Kurt struggled to free himself.

“Anderson, stylish badass chic is expensive,” Kurt grunted as he pulled at his arms, wrinkling his nose at the exertion. “It costs—ah, _fuck_ —a lot to look like you don’t give a shit.”

Blaine could feel Kurt’s breath stutter as he again nipped at the boy’s ear, his fingers flexing around the skin of one of Kurt’s wrists and the leather band that adorned the other, but he didn’t let go. His tongue massaged a spot just below Kurt’s ear and he smirked in satisfaction when he found that little sensitive spot he’d discovered just the other week and Kurt let out a  low moan and archedhis hips up.

“Blaine,” Kurt gasped out and Blaine smiled against his neck, moving over to peck him chastely on the lips before ducking away, his attention drawn away to the wrists he held over the back of the couch. Kurt struggled for breath beneath him as he pulled Kurt’s hands closer, using one hand to grip them both as he brushed over the three buckles that held the watch in place over the thin, pale skin of Kurt’s wrist, a thin swirl of ink peeking out from beneath it.

“What are you doing?” Kurt muttered, leaning his head back against the cushions, his voice light and breathy, his chest rising and falling with a stuttered rapidity, like the pulse of his heartbeat under the skin of his wrists.

Blaine shrugged, his entire body stilling even as it pulsed with life and jolted with electricity each time Kurt moved impatiently beneath him. He pushed the tongue of one strap out of the buckle, pausing to bend down and kiss Kurt firmly as Kurt growled in annoyance and thrust his hips upward again, pushing their hard cocks together and exploding feeling throughout Blaine’s entire body. Kurt groaned into his mouth, attempting to draw Blaine further in but Blaine pulled back with a sharp inhale, shushing Kurt with a smirk as the boy let out a noise of protest.

“Really, Anderson, that’s the article of clothing you should be _least_ worried about at the moment,” Kurt said pointedly, watching his movements.

“Perhaps the alcohol is impairing my judgment,” Blaine muttered in response, his words blending together slightly.

“I’m pretty sure you implied to me that the opposite would happen if I got you drunk,” Kurt muttered indignantly, but he settled back as Blaine flipped the other two straps out of the buckle and pulled the watch off, the heat of his body moving away from Kurt as he leaned across the couch to place the timekeeping device carefully on the coffee table. In the process, Kurt’s right hand fell away from his grip, but his fingers curled tightly around Kurt’s left, thumb meeting with the remaining four precisely at Kurt’s pulse point.

Blaine felt Kurt’s free hand brushing gently over his hip, travelling from its curve to the muscled expanse of his thigh, a fleeting movement that threatened to send a wave of sensation throughout each portion of Blaine’s body, like a distraction, but Blaine ignored it, his attention drawn to the smooth outline of words meticulously carved into the skin of Kurt’s wrist.

He loosened his grip and he felt Kurt’s attempts at distraction still as the boy tilted his head to watch Blaine as his thumb moved over the curl of ink that had peaked out from beneath the worn leather band and he followed it backward over the word, tracing smooth letters before it glided once over the detailed outline of a feather, as though he were expecting to feel it tickle the pad of his thumb.

“I never took you for a Beatles fan,” Blaine murmured, his gaze fixed at the simple outline of the ink drawing, his voice a little gruff, like something about the tattoo in his alcohol-heightened senses struck him as impeccably personal, like the intricately penned words of _blackbird, fly_ held in them some sort of meaning, something deep that held the key to the boy that had shrouded himself in calm quiet beneath him.

“I wasn’t aware that people who dislike the Beatles even exist,” Kurt replied with a light smile, his own gaze directed to the tattoo, as though it had been a while since he had considered it seriously.

“This the gangbanger tattoo you got in jouvie to look tough?” Blaine joked. He wasn’t quite sure why he was so fixated on the tattoo when he could feel Kurt hard against his leg and heat stirring lazily in his abdomen, but since he’d seen it in the supermart he’d been curious as to what it could be, whether it had been something permanent that meant to have meaning or something that might be passed off and one day removed, like the tongue ring that he would rarely see knocking against the backs of Kurt’s teeth those days.

Kurt laughed and settled back among the cushions with a slight huff, as though he’d realized that alcohol may have made Blaine more prone to distractions and therefore talk. “I got that after. It seemed . . . to make sense. It seemed hopeful.”

Blaine smiled and continued to brush his finger over the smooth skin, feeling Kurt tremble slightly beneath him as the movement, feather-like like the image he was tracing, tickled at Kurt’s nerves. He looked down at Kurt, enraptured by the intensity of the eyes that looked back at him, blue like the point at which the shallow point of an ocean succumbed to depth. His pale cheeks were coated with the lightest of residual pinks from the heat of the club and the nearness of the moment and Blaine felt a pull he’d never felt toward it in every cell in his body.

His tongue darted out to lick his lips, spine tingling as Kurt’s eyes flickered down eagerly at the movement, but instead of leaning forward, he pulled Kurt’s wrist toward his lips and pressed a gentle kiss to the words emblazoned in the skin.

“You should sing it,” he murmured against Kurt’s wrist.

Kurt didn’t respond and Blaine glanced at him to see him staring with a furrowed brow. “Blaine Anderson, you’ve got my dick pressed against yours and you want me to sing Beatles songs to you?”

Blaine smiled, closing his eyes and licking a tentative movement along the curve of the _b_ , smirking in satisfaction when Kurt inhaled shakily, his eyes closing at the sensation. “Mmhmm,” he hummed. Kurt’s breath quickened at the vibrations that coursed through his body and he angled his hips upward again, hoping to distract Blaine but Blaine simply laughed, though it was interjected by a gasp, choked with sensation **.** “I want to hear you out-sing Bas.”

“I’m not singing to you when I could be fucking you into this couch,” Kurt growled, annoyance clear in his voice and he thrust upward again, cursing softly when Blaine chuckled again, this time moving his hips away from the contact.

“Is it because you know you’ll suck?” Blaine teased, biting his lip as he grinned down at Kurt.

“If you don’t focus, I won’t be sucking anything.”

“If it makes you feel better, I’m probably too drunk to remember it tomorrow,” Blaine assured him, eyes twinkling.

“You’re an awfully logical drunk, in that case.”

“It’s a gift and a curse,” Blaine lamented with mock sadness, drawing out a bark of laughter from Kurt.

“Besides, if you’re too drunk to remember, what’s the point?”

“ _Kurt_ ,” Blaine whined, thrusting his bottom lip out in a pout. Kurt drew a long breath at the spit that glistened on it.

“Blaine, I’m not singing for you—aaah,” Kurt gasped as Blaine leaned forward and sucked earnestly at the soft skin of his wrist.

“Why?”

Kurt exhaled in disbelief, though when Blaine opened his eyes to glance at him, there was something inexplicably soft in it, even a little sad, as though he had resigned himself to the realization that Blaine didn’t easily let things go. “There’s no music,” he replied finally.

Blaine frowned, swaying as he contemplated this predicament. He waited until he saw the gleam of triumph in Kurt’s eyes before he leaned in and continued what he’d been doing, swiping his tongue along the _l_ before he started vocalizing softly. “Dum dum dum dumdudum dumdudum . . .”

Kurt snorted as the action against his wrist tickled and he struggled to wrench his hand away, pulling Blaine off-balance, forcing him to brace himself against the couch with his free hand. “What are you doing?” Kurt laughed, staring up at Blaine as the latter hovered over him.

“I’m . . .” Blaine frowned, scanning his brain for the correct term and frowning when he couldn’t seem to quite remember it. “I’m a cappella-ing for you,” he answered finally.

Kurt snickered. “You’re _what_?”

“You know,” Blaine muttered, swaying slightly at the angle at which he was positioned, ducking down to press a light kiss to Kurt’s temple.

Kurt rolled his eyes, sighing with pleasure as Blaine leaned back again, redirecting his attention to Kurt’s wrist, his tongue writing out the next letter. He melted back into the seat, looking resignedly at Blaine, his gaze laced with an intense affection before he murmured, “You were going too fast. I prefer the T.V. Carpio version.”

Blaine raised his eyebrow and drew over two more letters, his eyes twinkling with an unspoken urge to _get on with it then, since you’ve not chances of arguing your way out of it_. ****

Kurt sighed, letting his hand settle on the curve of Blaine’s hip, the tips of his fingers ducking under the material of Blaine’s shirt to tickle at the soft skin there. He contemplated the action **,** his eyes fixed on his hand, on the way that Blaine adjusted his position so that the flaming heat of Kurt’s fingers could sear into his side. Kurt stared at the action **,** as though momentarily mesmerized, before he inhaled, long and slow.

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night_

_Take these broken wings and learn to fly_

_All your life, you were only waiting_

_For this moment to arise_

Blaine froze where he was focused on the dark ink that had been seeped under Kurt’s skin to spell out that which he refused to acknowledge. His tongue hovered over the final letter in _blackbird_ , but he didn’t make another motion, his eyes fixed on Kurt in surprise. Kurt’s voice faltered momentarily as Blaine’s inhale cooled the patch of wet skin he breathed against, but without Blaine’s ministrations to the sensitive skin the song grew stronger, melody flowing out smoothly and slowly.

_Blackbird singing in the dead of night_

_Take these sunken eyes and learn to see_

_All your life, you were only waiting_

_For this moment to be free_

Kurt’s eyes seemed to glaze as he sang, the melody smooth and slow, the notes drawn out and beautiful and he didn’t notice Blaine staring. Didn’t acknowledge the way Blaine’s grip on his wrist seemed to slip momentarily until Blaine’s fingers tightened again before Kurt’s hand could fall from his grasp.

_Blackbird, fly_

Blaine found it hard to swallow, his eyes fixed on Kurt, who had relaxed back against the couch, his eyes hooded as he sang. They weren’t quite closed, though they would flicker shut on a long note. His gaze wasn’tdirected anywhere in particular, leaving Blaine free to watch him with wide eyes and an open mouth as he listened, a battle raging within him. He watched the blush fading from Kurt’s cheeks and he could feel the rush of blood through his own veins, stirring and crashing through his system like rapids around rocks and he stared at Kurt as though he were seeing him for the first time. It was suddenly obvious, so painfully obvious, the emotion that coursed through him and the name that seemed to be emblazonedin his mind, allowing the songs to make sense and wrapping his heart in a tight embrace.

_Into the light of the dark black night_

Kurt finished softly, closing his eyes completely and angling his head to expose the line of his jaw, his lips tilting into a cocky smile as he cut off the last note, bringing his chin down to look at Blaine expectantly, his eyes blazing with something that Blaine had never seen before. His chest moved up and down as he caught his breath, muscles moving under the tight, thin T-shirt, something that seemed to carve the name of the emotion, the one that had been twisting in Blaine’s gut for weeks, into walls of his heart.

“There. Are you satisfied? Can we have sex now?” Kurt smirked, gazing up at Blaine with an astounding amount of confidence, the way in which he was so incredibly pleased with himself.

The sound of his voice after even the briefest period of silence startled Blaine and his eyes flickered across Kurt’s face as he drew a shallow breath, letting it out with a whisper of, “ _Oh_.”

He was in—

 “I mean,” Kurt started when Blaine didn’t say any more, his confidence wavering. He inhaled quickly as something old and defensive tried to settle into his features. “I haven’t sung in months so it might be a little patchy, but really if you’re thinking of going there with the whole ‘sings like a girl’ trope,” he muttered, tongue darting out to lick his lips, “I’m going to tell you right now that it’s old n—mmph!”

He didn’t know what it was but somehow Kurt’s voice snapped something in him and Blaine flew forward, their lips colliding as he pressed Kurt backwards against the couch. It was like pulling a trigger,flooding every one of Blaine’s senses with a sudden, uncontrollable need and the strength of his movement, the urgent swipe of his tongue into Kurt’s open mouth, elicited a surprised moan from the boy, one that swept through Blaine like a breeze riding on the end of a hurricane. He felt a hand flying up to grip his bicep, half entangled in the sleeve of his shirt, holding him closer even as he thrust his tongue in deeper, eyes screwed shut with feeling.

Kurt gasped into his mouth, eyes fluttering shut and eyelashes brushing against Blaine’s cheek and the movement, the withdrawal of air directly from his lungs sparked Blaine’s nerves and he didn’t stop the noise that chased air into Kurt. Kurt froze before melting into the action, his fingers squeezing muscle and trimmed fingernails leaving faint impressions of crescent moons in Blaine’s skin. He tried to keep up until the lack of air burned his lungs and he pulled away, struggling to breathe, his eyes dark and shocked for the brief moment that they gazed at each other before Blaine dived back in, his lips tracing the sinews of Kurt’s neck as the boy’s head flew back, his body straining to the touch.

“ _Fuck_ —I—what’s with you to—ngh—today?” Kurt panted.

“Want you,” Blaine muttered, his teeth scraping over Kurt’s pulse, fingers catching on his nipples in a way that made Kurt _mewl_ , thrustinghis hips up to shoot sparks down Blaine’s spine. He let out a noise of protest as Kurt’s hands found the hem of his shirt and practically tore it over his head, breaking them away only to find Kurt’s hands in his hair, pulling him back so that his lips could attack Blaine’s body, tongue working strange markings into the sensitive spot on Blaine’s skin.

“So fucking bad.”

He arched with a groan, a tongue flicking out against his nipple.

“Want to fuck you so bad, _fuck—_ what are you doing don’t stop that _Kurt_ ,” Blaine muttered, glancing down in annoyance when Kurt pulled away. Blaine opened his eyes, flashing Kurt a disgruntled look before spotting his expression. “Kurt?”

Kurt didn’t answer, leaning back and gazing at Blaine with a slightly puzzled expression, like he was confused about something and one that had Blaine biting back a comment about what it was that he’d said that could possibly need clarification. Kurt’s eyes searched his face for a moment, pupils blown and irises sparkling with want and later Blaine wondered if he’d imagined it, for it was so fleeting in the millisecond before Kurt’s hands gripped his ass and flipped him over onto his back on the couch, lips skimming along his jawline urgently. Wondered if he imagined the breath of, “Not yet,” being exhaled near his ear before Kurt was pushing himself up, gracefully flopping off the couch onto his feet.

“Kurt?” Blaine muttered, propping himself up on his elbows and scrutinizing Kurt carefully, but Kurt gave him a smirk and pulled his own shirt over his head, tossing it teasingly at Blaine before his fingers hooked underneath the dark denim of his jeans, pulling the material away from his skin as he took a step backward, moving around the couch and toward the bedroom. Blaine sat up to watch him over the back of the couch as he flicked at the button of his jeans, pirouetting smoothly as he pulled the zipper down.

“You don’t hurry up, Anderson, I’m going to start without you,” Kurt called over his shoulder, starting to glance over his shoulder just as Blaine cleared the back couch, stumbling slightly in the residual remains of his drunken state before barreling into Kurt, propelling them both into the bedroom, lit only by the warm glow of Blaine’s bedside lamp.

Blaine wound his arms around Kurt’s torso, batting pale hands away from Kurt’s jeans as he sucked at Kurt’s collarbone, his chest warm against Kurt’s bare back. Kurt inhaled shakily as Blaine’s teeth scraped over a sensitive spot and he grabbed Blaine’s arm, whirling Blaine around and, with one hand flat on his chest, pushing him down onto the mattress, his back bouncing lightly against it before he propped himself up on his elbows. His eyes were dark with lust and emotion as Kurt edged closer to the bed with a light, predatory smile, his fingers hooking under the material of his boxers as he kicked his boots off and pulled both articles of clothing down in one swift movement.

“Shit,” Blaine muttered, his gaze fixed as Kurt’s cock sprang free of the tight confines of his jeans, hard and dark, straining toward his stomach. Kurt looked pleased with himself, even his smile dark and smug in light of the look in his eyes as he dropped down to his knees, his fingers flying agilely along the leather of Blaine’s belt, pulling his own pantsand boxer briefs down over his knees to pool at his feet before he pushed Blaine’s knees apart, slinking his way between them and pressing hard, wet kisses to the inside of Blaine’s thigh, working his way up.

Kurt paused near Blaine’s cock, eyesglistening mischievously as he bit his lip and his gaze flicking up to Blaine’s face before he propelled his body upward, licking a long stripe up the underside of his cock so quickly and suddenly that Blaine’s head flew back onto the bed with a snap, a groan escaping him before he even realized that the contact had ceased and Kurt’s body was hovering over his, his mouth attaching to that old familiar spot just below his jaw as he thrust downward against Blaine.

Blaine swore, and arched his hips upward, sliding against Kurt, the friction rough and hard and Kurt’s tongue was back in his mouth, kissing him hard and wet, urgent and . . .different, somehow, like there was an unnecessary apology in it. Blaine wanted to stop and contemplate it, follow his own natural instinct to analyze, but Kurt ground down deliberately against him, their cocks sliding together and pushing Blaine, teetering, toward the edge. He whined into Kurt’s mouth, his hands guiding Kurt’s hips as the pads of his fingers pressed into the smooth flesh.

Blaine’s fingersslid down along Kurt’s ass as the boy adjusted his position, pressing one knee against Blaine’s side as he broke their mouths apart and slid up his body, trying to stretch himself across the bed to reach for Blaine’s bedside table. His fingers scrambled along the wood and he growled, low and deep in his throat and moved closer until his fingers gripped the knob and he pulled a drawer open, humming a little in triumph and in pleasure as Blaine kneaded the soft flesh of his ass.

“Where’re your damn—oh, fuck, _Jesus_!” Kurt exclaimed, the arm propping him up shaking as his head flew back. Below him, Blaine smirked in satisfaction, sticking his tongue out and massaging the tip of Kurt’s cock where it hovered perfectly level with his lips. Kurt swore loudly, his head falling down as he panted, his knees quivering to hold him up as Blaine slipped his lips over the head of Kurt’s cock, pushing forward on his hips to bring Kurt closer as he sank down.

“Fuck, _Blaine_ ,” Kurt groaned, hips jerking forward out of Blaine’s grasp, seeking the wet heat of his mouth, eyes squeezed shut as pleasure rippled through him. Blaine grunted as the movement thrust more of Kurt’s cock into his mouth, but he loosened his throat and took him in, pressing his tongue flat along the thick vein on the underside of Kurt as he pulled off, the movement dragging and tight in a way that had Kurt writhing above him, torn between the searing flashes of pleasure that drew a string of swears from his mouth and had him thrusting forward and the effort it took to keep from collapsing down on Blaine.

Blaine pulled off with a pop, swirling his tongue once around Kurt’s head, the sounds of a quick, desperate search of the drawer of his bedside table barely registering before Kurt dropped away from him, materials in hand and cheeks the color of the western sky as the sun was setting.

“Kurt,” Blaine breathed in protest, whining as Kurt’s mouth pressed over his, open and wet and sloppy before the boy slid back down his body, setting fire to Blaine’s flesh wherever his mouth descended in fleeting contact. Blaine propped himself up on his elbows and opened his mouth again to demand Kurt kiss him again, but Kurt was already between his legs, pressing his mouth against the muscle of Blaine’s thigh and sucking gently, swirling his tongue against the skin as his fingers curled around Blaine’s ankle, lifting his foot to rest flat on the bed, spreading his legs apart.

Blaine watched him, pulse racing and heart struggling to pound correctly with all this extra feeling in it. His eyes met Kurt’s and he felt another surge of emotion, a flash of heat that pushed his blood further south until he was simply aching. Aching not with a need to get off but for the boy that was watching him with dark, confident eyes, whose hand was brushing through his leg hairs as it migrated north, pressing into the fresh bruise inside his thigh before skimming lower, the backs of Kurt’s nails skimming over skin before withdrawing, the pop of the little bottle of lube echoing throughout the room and hovering on the thick, heated air.

“I want—” Kurt breathed, eyes so dark that the blue in them was hardly discernible, but there was still a light in them, flickering with pure heat. He rubbed the cold, thick liquid over his fingers before sliding forward, his lips pressing into the curve of Blaine’s thigh as he slipped his hand between Blaine’s cheeks, feeling the quivering clench of Blaine’s abdomen under his mouth.

Blaine felt his breath hitch at the finger that rubbed gently over his entrance, the warm heat of Kurt’s cheek so near the strain of his erection as he continued to trace his mouth over Blaine’s ribs. He was torn between the contact and the swell of his heart when the rubbing finger stilled perfectly before pressing in through rings of muscle, slow and circling until Kurt was pressed in up to his first knuckle and Blaine was panting, his entire body strained at the touch, at the strange fullness of the intrusion but it wasn’t enough, never quite enough.

“More,” he grunted, his fingers twisting in Kurt’s hair as Kurt traced unknown words into his skin, his one finger working in and out slowly.

Kurt glanced up at him through his lashes, eyes hooded and he nodded, moving his mouth further up Blaine’s body as he inserted a second finger, stretching under the clench of Blaine’s muscles, his fingers dragging in and out slowly, twisting in and out like the coil being pulled tight at the pit of Blaine’s stomach.

“Jesus fuck, Hummel,” Blaine gasped as Kurt crooked his fingers slightly, but not quite enough, continuing his tantalizing movements as he pulled out and teased the muscles of Blaine’s hole before adding a third finger. “I’m not some blushing virgin, hurry the f—”

Blaine cut himself off with a shout as three fingers pushed into him with an almost astounding rapidity, bending hard in search and finding that small bundle of nerves almost instantaneously. Blaine shot off the bed as though electrocuted, his hips grinding down on Kurt’s hand as he keened, the foreshadowing of explosions making him ache.

“You were saying?” Kurt smirked, his tongue licking between the dark hair of Blaine’s chest, the smirk evident in his voice.

“Fuck you,” Blaine growled, panting hard, but he could barely speak, words forming at the tip of his tongue short-circuiting with each rub of Kurt’s fingers over his prostate.

He groaned as Kurt’s mouth connected with his, his tongue sweeping over the roof of his mouth before thrusting hard against his own, pressing in hard and twisting in synch with his fingers. Each point of contact had Blaine’s head reeling, pushing him to the very edge before he forced himself backward, even as he thrust up against Kurt and curled his tongue around Kurt’s to draw him further, to draw out that perfect, breathy moan from deep within Kurt’s chest.

He fumbled blindly for the condoms Kurt had dropped by his side, dropping his hand from where it’d been pressing Kurt’s hips closer as he ground up against him and struggling to rip open the wrapper without ever breaking contact with Kurt, but before he could protest Kurt was pulling away, the sudden absence of his hand and mouth leaving Blaine so _empty_ that his hand’s scrambled to pull him back, only to be swatted away by Kurt.

“So needy,” Kurt muttered, but he too was breathless, almost in awe of the fact as he quickly stripped the condom of its wrapper and unrolled it over his erection, gasping at the contact. He squirted a liberal amount of lube onto his hand and fisted himself, hissing at the cool liquid, his head flying back and his hips stuttering forward into the tight heat of his fist, losing himself in the pleasure of the mild relief, in the pressure of Blaine’s hands as they pressed into his hips.

Blaine let out a noise of frustration, pulling Kurt’s hand off himself. He thrust his arm over his head, pulling Kurt forward until their hands landed on the pillow behind Blaine. “Get the fuck in me, Hummel,” he demanded and for the first time that night Kurt didn’t present a snarky comeback. Instead, his eyes darkened and his tongue darted out to lick his lips.

His free hand reached down to position himself as he angled his hips, rubbing the head of his cock against Blaine’s hole, his head dropping down until his forehead rested against Blaine, his sweat mingling with Blaine’s as he pressed in, hand moving under Blaine’s thigh to push a leg over his own shoulder, opening him up as he pressed in until he was balls-deep, his face pressed against Blaine’s, their breaths mingling as they struggled to gain control of themselves.

“Move,” Blaine muttered against Kurt’s lips and Kurt nodded, his mouth open and pressed against Blaine as he eased his hips back, groaning at the tight clench of muscles around him. He was almost out, his hips moving in small circles before they snapped forward sharply.

Blaine cried out, the sound of it being swallowed as Kurt ravaged his mouth again, his thrust nothing close to gentle as the first experimental one dissolved into a sprint toward the edge of the cliff, hard and fast and unrelenting. Their mouths didn’t so much kiss as simply slide against one another, all teeth and tongue and a need that exploded with each movement of Kurt’s hips, each explosive brush of his cock against Blaine’s prostate.

Blaine let out a string of swears, each blending into the next until they were hardly distinguishable.

The fingers of Kurt’s right hand, still damp with lube from fisting himself, curled between Blaine’s gripping his hand tight on the pillow above his head and Blaine’s heart surged at the intimacy of the gesture, the pressure tightening his balls and, fuck, he was no inexperienced teenager but he sure as hell wasn’t going to last long now.

“Kurt,” he moaned, rotating his hips down to meet Kurt’s thrust in, arm winding round Kurt’s shoulders to keep him close. “ _Kurt_ ,” he begged, the boy’s name the only one he could come up with.

Kurt groaned against him, understanding the unspoken request but doing nothing apart from increasing his pace.

“Touch—”

“Not sure . . . necessary,” Kurt pant, gasping as Blaine thrust down onto him. “Bet I can make you without.”

“I hate you,” Blaine groaned as Kurt pounded hard into him and the tingling in his balls tightened and hovered on the edge, his cock hard and leaking and ignored between them as Kurt’s free hand skimmed up his side to grip his ears.

“Please, you love me, asshole,” Kurt moaned against his mouth, his eyes clenched shut and with the word he thrust in hard and something inside Blaine snapped as his entire body clenched and exploded, white clouding his vision as he arched in release, everything wiped clean by the waves except for three short words and the rush of wind past his body as he fell.

“God, I l—”

 

* * *

 

Blaine’s reminiscing stuttered off with a gasp as he felt a cool hand wrap around his erection—making Blaine suddenly very, _very_ aware of the heat that had been bubbling through his body at the flashback—and he whined, bucking up instinctively into the touch.

He felt Kurt rolling nearer until his chest was pressed against Blaine’s, his hand pumping slowly and lazily as his breath tickled against Blaine’s ear.

“Getting ready for round two without me? Really, Blaine, that’s so _rude_ ,” he murmured, twisting his hand at the last word. Blaine cried out at the rush of pleasure, arching off the bed.

“Not my fault your lazy ass was asleep,” he countered with a growl between panting breaths.

Kurt laughed in his ear and began slinking himself down Blaine’s body, the tight heat of his fist unrelenting.

Blaine gasped as he watched him, his head flying back as Kurt’s tongue flicked out to tease the head of his erection, one word and a name flashing behind the darkness of his eyes as they squeezed shut.

The phrase still echoed through his head in absolute certainty.

Blaine Anderson was in love with Kurt Hummel.


	20. Chapter 20

Blaine sat at his usual table at the Lima Bean. There was a steaming mug of coffee on the table before him, vapor rising up from it and curling into delicate swirls. It reminded him of Kurt. Blaine blinked, one hand shifting where it was curled around the mug, palm absorbing its heat. His thumb reached out over the liquid, moving absently through the steam.  
  
He cast a glance at the empty seat across from him before heaving a sigh, leaning back in his chair and looking out the window. He started out looking for the telltale gleam of Kurt’s motorcycle, the familiar rumble that could be heard even through the glass, but he ended up lost in thought.  
  
He was in love with him. There was really no way around it. Not that Blaine was hell-bent on finding one, not with that constant thought of Kurt hovering at the back of his brain or the feeling that had seeped into his veins like a constant, like the oxygen transported there, like a throbbing, heated necessity.  
  
Two months ago he would have laughed it off. Hell, he _had_ laughed it off, the utter absurdity of the joke Cas had been offering him clenching his sides. Now he couldn’t help thinking about how much sense it made. How his body had betrayed him each time Kurt was close enough for Blaine to feel his heat or have every one of his senses engulfed by the smell of smoke and spice and wind. How he had kept drifting toward the boy even after beating himself up about it or after that explosion of, well, _shit_ that had gone down between himself, Kurt and Matt in his apartment.  
  
He was in love with him and the more times the words were rolled over his tongue, just on the verge of spilling out, the more he felt as though he were being filled with helium, threatening to float away.  
  
The problem was—and there was always a problem, it seemed—was that he didn’t quite know what to _do_ with that information. Because to tell Kurt would run the risk of scaring him off. Even after his admission in the parking lot, he had just remained so . . . mysterious? Withdrawn, like he was bracing himself for the moment he hit the ground and somehow, unless Kurt made the first move, Blaine couldn’t be sure if an admission of love would solidify things or tear them apart.  
  
He was so lost in thought, his gaze blurring as he stared out into the sunlit parking lot, that he barely noticed the crash of a door and jingle of a bell as a tall, Latina woman tore through it, her shorter companion on her heels, their conversation ringing throughout the entire café. He wrinkled his nose slightly at the interruption and brought his coffee to his lips, but otherwise paid no attention to their argument.  
  
“Santana!”  
  
“Listen, Dwarf, if I’d known getting involved in your little mission would result in you following me around more than you do normally, I would have seriously thought twice.”  
  
“I know you want to fix things as much as the rest of us!”  
  
“Don’t you ever get tired of the sound of your own voice?”  
  
“Well, maybe if you weren’t just sitting around doing nothing—”  
  
“And what exactly do you want me to do? _Stalk_ him? Give me something to work with, then yell at me if I continue to sit on my ass.”  
  
“You know full well that—”  
  
“That Teen Gay isn’t going to listen to us? Yeah, he’s smart like that.”  
  
“So, our only option—”  
  
“I’m well aware of our options and if you’re so hell-bent on this, you go find him.”  
  
“Santana—”  
  
“God knows you fit the profile of the creepy stalker more than I do—”  
  
“Santana, he’s _here_!”  
  
For the moment, their voices died away, the silence filled by the normal hum of noise of the café. Blaine didn’t miss the noise, for as much as he hadn’t been paying attention to it, the fact that it had the tendency to ride above the white noise of the coffee shop had been grating his nerves, especially when he was preoccupied with far more important things.  
  
He’d barely registered the low whistle and murmur of, “Well, someone certainly has good taste,” when the chair across the table from him was pulled out with a loud noise and a long, lithe body dropped into it gracefully with a loud declaration of, “’Sup, Hobbit?”  
  
Blaine jumped, his gaze flying away from the window to land on the girl that had slipped in the seat reserved for his . . . boyfriend? Is that what they were? He shook the thought away as he took her in. She perched at the edge of the seat, leaning forward across the table and even as a gay man he recognized the fact that she was startling beautiful. Her black eyes pierced into him as she watched him, apparently waiting for him to speak.  
  
“Can I help you?” he asked warily, well aware that her companion was still hovering near his right side, but he somehow couldn’t tear his focus to her.  
  
The Latina eyed him, her eyes twinkling darkly. She leaned her chin under her hand, one finger tapping out a slow beat against her lips. “I’ll say you can,” she practically purred, her voice flowing like honey.  
  
Blaine snorted into his coffee, setting down the mug before he did irreversible damage. “That’s sweet,” he responded, wrinkling his nose slightly at her when her perfectly shaped eyebrow rose. “But not on your team.”  
  
She seemed to consider this statement, her lips pursing thoughtfully. “Well, I wouldn’t necessarily say that.”  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
She shrugged, eyes glittering. “How would that sort of classification work, actually? If you’re a queer and I’m a queer, does that mean we play for the same team? How many teams actually exist?”  
  
“Santana, focus.”  
  
Blaine started at the second voice, having completely forgotten the presence of the girl’s—Santana, it would seem—companion, but now that her voice echoed over the small expanse of the table he realized that it held a startling familiarity for him.  
  
“Rachel?” he murmured, his brows furrowing in confusion as he looked up to take in the girl hovering by the side of the table.  
  
The instant he said her name, his eyes flickering between the two girls in puzzlement and a reborn sense of suspicion, Rachel’s face lit up, going from anxious to pleased faster than Blaine could even process. “Blaine! You remember me!” she exclaimed excitedly, her voice rising several decibels as she reached over to another table and pulled a chair over to sit down, bouncing a little as she landed in the seat.  
  
Blaine mouthed soundlessly for a moment, unable to quite find the right words. He shook his head to clear it before fixing her with a curious gaze. “Seeing as you crashed my date in admirable, if not dramatic, style, I’m surprised you assumed I would forget you.”  
  
Rachel flushed a deep crimson, her eyes widening. “Oh God, I’m so sorry about that! I was just surprised to see you two again and I don’t know what came over me because even though it seemed like you knew him, I’d assumed you were just someone that Kurt had . . . umm,” Rachel broke off awkwardly, her cheeks reddening further.  
  
“Someone Kurt had fucked, yeah,” Blaine supplied, some of his suspicion transforming into sympathy at Rachel’s uncontrollable ramble.  
  
Rachel’s mouth dropped open and she looked at him in slight shock, as though she hadn’t expected him to be quite so blunt about it. “I just . . . well, yes, but when I saw you with Kurt at—”  
  
“Speaking of Hummel,” Santana interrupted, flashing Rachel a glare for getting completely sidetracked and smirking lightly when Blaine turned his attention back to her, eyes narrowing slightly. “We want to talk to you about him.”  
  
Blaine frowned, looking between the girls. “About Kurt?” he repeated slowly.  
  
“No, his dead father,” Santana deadpanned, ignoring Rachel’s indignant screech before rolling her eyes and muttering, “ _Yes_ , Kurt,” as though she thought that Blaine would take her seriously. “To put it simply, preppy, we want him back.”  
  
“You want him back?” Blaine repeated, his brow furrowing as he stared at Santana before casting a glance out the window, where Kurt’s motorbike was still absent from the parking lot.  
  
Santana rolled her eyes in annoyance, turning to Rachel with a motion so quick it sent her long hair flying over her shoulder. “ _This_ is our best option, Berry? Preppy hobbit that serves the same function as a parrot?”  
  
Rachel opened her mouth to speak, but Blaine interrupted her, turning back to Santana and leaning in across the table. “First off, you’re the one who’s being vague, not me. Second, you might want to rethink whether you can get him back, as I doubt you ‘had him’ in the first place. Third, I don’t understand what it is you want from _me_.”  
  
Santana’s eyebrows flew up at this attack and Blaine could see her gearing up with a scathing retort when he felt Rachel’s hand touch his arm gently. He looked away from Santana to see Rachel looking at him with wide eyes. “We were hoping you’d help us.”  
  
Blaine frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but Santana interrupted with a groan of, “I swear, if you answer with, ‘Help us?’ I will drive my heel through your foot.”  
  
“Blaine, I don’t know what Kurt’s told you about himself and us,” Rachel interjected quickly before Blaine could turn back to Santana with an annoyed retort. “But whatever he might say, we all still consider him to be family. He was one of our glee club’s five original members and for a long time, the five of us were the closest thing to family that could be found in that school. We wanted to help him when his dad died, but he wouldn’t let us. None of us knew what to do, but it’s not the same without him and we just . . . we want him back. We don’t want him to be alone.”  
  
Her eyes were wide and sincere as she spoke, as though she were afraid that Kurt had ruined any good opinion Blaine might develop of her. Blaine watched her, his expression not wavering though his brain raced to process the information. He glanced at Santana out of the corner of his eye to see if she had anything to add, but she had settled back in her seat, watching him with a piercing stare as she played with the perfectly manicured nails on her hand.  
  
“Why now?” he asked finally, looking sternly at Rachel. He didn’t know what it was, but he was suddenly feeling incredibly defensive of the delicate situation and the potential for harm that meddling was sure to cause.  
  
“It has nothing to do with the conversation you overheard us having here,” Rachel reassured quickly. “Well . . . not entirely. It has nothing to do with membership or anything—we have enough members after all the pre-Sectional drama got tied up,” she continued, glancing at Santana, who gave Blaine a brief nod. “But even then, it was an excuse, you know? Like . . . well, we needed more members and the club used to mean so much to him so maybe that could be . . . a jumping point.”  
  
“You didn’t answer my question, though,” Blaine said, with a frown. “His dad died over a year ago, then jouvie happened after that, but all this was months ago. Why do you suddenly want to pull him back in so badly?”  
  
“Because we think we can now,” Santana spoke up, looking at him seriously. When Blaine looked confused she continued. “Look, Anderson, I’m as tough a bitch as they come, but none of us were expecting it when we found out he went all psycho on those jackasses from the football team. We all thought Puckerman was messing with us when we heard. I think half of us were impressed with how badass it was and the other half were just stunned by it. But when he came back, he was just different. I mean, before, Baby Gay was gay. Like, really gay, complete with flamboyant outfits and high voice and show tunes, but afterwards . . . the assholes he beat up were terrified of him and the rest of the student body. The first person that tried to talk to him was Finn—boyfriend to RuPaul over here—”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“I know who Finn is,” Blaine interrupted loudly over Rachel’s exclamation.  
  
“Then you’re also probably aware of the fact that he’s as big as Paul fucking Bunyan and has less balls than most chicks I know. He tried to talk to Kurt and got himself slammed against the lockers with the kid swearing at him more than any damn sailor I’ve ever heard. Beiste pulled him off and he stalked off and no one saw him for the rest of the day. None of us were stupid enough to approach him again.”  
  
“Until you came along,” Rachel jumped in, perching eagerly at the edge of her seat as she gazed at Blaine with a combination of excitement and pure, unadorned curiosity. “I didn’t notice it at first but he seemed happier. I don’t know when he met you, but for a couple of weeks there was something different about him, something more like the Kurt that we’d all known before his dad died. Where he normally just ignored everyone around him, he was suddenly smiling to himself and . . . I mean, after Karofsky slushied him he kind of went back to having a storm cloud over his head for a couple of weeks, but . . .” she paused, as though she’d reached the end of the prepared part of her speech, the bit that was known and rehearsed and now she was threading in uncharted territories. She had clearly had every intention of having this conversation with Blaine, but had no way of predicting what it would lead to.  
  
Blaine watched her as she bit her lip and ducked her head, brow furrowed in thought. “That you have an unhealthy obsession with sweaters with animals on them and that you might have been friends if you’d had the time,” he murmured finally, his voice gentle.  
  
“What?”  
  
“That’s what he told me about you.”  
  
Rachel’s eyes lit up almost instantly. “So you’ll help us?” she exclaimed.  
  
Blaine couldn’t help but smile at her excitement. He glanced from Rachel to Santana, who had stopped obsessing over her nails to look at him again expectantly, her anxiety subtle but present in the shine of her eyes. He opened his mouth to answer, but got distracted by that familiar rumble of an engine growing outside before it was killed and silence again reigned throughout the parking lot outside the window. Blaine glanced over his shoulder to see Kurt swinging his leg over the bike. He ran a hand through his hair, adjusting its wind-blown nature and a second later their eyes met through the window.  
  
Blaine felt that incredible surge of emotion, his pulse quickening at the sight. Kurt looked annoyed with something, but the moment he spotted Blaine within the café his entire person softened and he was about to break into a smile when he noticed the two girls that had invaded Blaine’s table. He looked shocked for a moment, blue eyes flickering between Santana and Blaine for a moment before they narrowed in frustration and he turned on his heel to march toward the door.  
  
“Shit,” Blaine muttered, shifting in his seat as he followed Kurt’s movements. He knew that look and could feel his stomach clenching in anticipation as Kurt pushed the door open roughly and stalked over to their table. Next to him, Rachel had paled, as though for some reason it hadn’t crossed her mind that the reason Blaine was at the Lima Bean was to meet Kurt. Santana, on the other hand, turned halfway in her seat and watched Kurt approach with a pleased smirk on her face.  
  
“What the hell are you doing?” Kurt demanded, ignoring Blaine’s exclamation of his name and looking between the two girls.  
  
“Hey, Lady Lips,” Santana purred, while Rachel remained frozen in something of a shock, her eyes wide as she tried to come up with some excuse.  
  
Kurt raised an eyebrow and, if Blaine wasn’t mistake, there was the briefest spark of amusement in his eyes before he glared at Rachel. “I don’t know what you’re scheming, Rachel, but bravo, I didn’t expect you to involve Satan.”  
  
“I’m not scheming anything—”  
  
“Oh, please,” Kurt snorted. “Whatever it is, back the fuck off and don’t go involving him in it,” he growled, pointing a finger at Blaine, who looked slightly surprised that no part of the attack was directed at him.  
  
Before anyone could formulate a response, Santana was on her feet, arm winding around Kurt’s shoulders. Startled, Kurt jerked away from her, but somehow she managed to keep a tight grip on him, pulling him close to her side and looking smugly into the face of his death-glare. “C’mon, Pretty Pony, I haven’t had any caffeine yet.”  
  
“I’m not—”  
  
“We’ll have a little gay date while Frodo and Gollum play, Hummel,” she grinned, flashing Rachel a quick look as she forced Kurt around and started marching them off, her nails digging into his jacket as he tried to jerk away. “I’ll even tell you about all the good things those jeans are doing to your ass,” she smirked and twisted around to smack the body part in question with her free hand.  
  
“Let go of me, Sandbags!” Kurt hissed, the demand falling on deaf ears.  
  
“Which one am I?” Blaine yelled after them, his curiosity and mild amusement at Kurt being man-handled by Santana overcoming his sympathy for Kurt’s plight. He shrugged apologetically, though, as Kurt turned his head to glare at him over his shoulder.  
  
“Oh, Berry is definitely Gollum,” Santana called back loudly as she pushed Kurt into the line in front of the counter, arm still tight around his shoulders as she started saying something into his ear, her eyes glowing mischievously.  
  
Blaine laughed, rolling his eyes as he watched Kurt snarling back answers to whatever Santana was throwing at him. Somehow, even in his clear desire to extract himself from her grip, he found something intensely pleasurable about being forced to interact with her, in the constant fire of witty comebacks and blazing insults. Even from a distance, Blaine could see the eventual loosening of muscle in his shoulders, the lightest of smirks complimenting the mild twinkle in his eye.  
  
“He trusts you.”  
  
Blaine started, so absorbed in watching Kurt that he’d almost forgotten that Rachel had been left at the table with him. He turned back to her, shocked to find her leaning back in her seat and observing him with a narrow, focused gaze, as though she had been presented with something that she hadn’t been expecting.  
  
“I’m sorry?”  
  
Rachel bit her lip and frowned. “He just . . . he really trusts you.”  
  
Blaine pursed his lips, his brows furrowing in confusion, wondering why the fact might be so surprising. “What makes you say that?”  
  
Rachel shrugged, licking her lips as her gaze fell to her lap again. “I . . . I don’t know. I just . . . I wasn’t expecting to see him here and when he came in, I guess I was expecting everything to blow up in our faces. That he’d see you with us and . . . accuse you of scheming too but . . .” she glanced up to look at him, something admiring in her gaze. “But it’s like the thought never even crossed his mind.”  
  
Blaine exhaled, ducking his head for a moment to observe the swirling steam rising from his cup before looking back at where Kurt and Santana were standing near the condiments. Kurt was no longer caught in her grip. Instead, he leaned against the counter where she was pouring creamer into her coffee, his cup held in both hands, his thumbs drumming out a beat on the cardboard as he watched her with a narrowed gaze. As though sensing the sudden attention, he glanced up to meet Blaine’s gaze. The expression on his face was neutral, with still some residual annoyance from the strange situation he found himself in, but his eyes were warm like the sky on a summer’s day. He held Blaine’s gaze, his mouth opening slightly as they stared at each other and he seemed to have forgotten about Santana until she noticed his inattentiveness and, mimicking his pose, leaned close and murmured something into his ear.  
  
“Blaine?” Rachel asked quietly, the warmth of her fingers touching his wrist as Kurt’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly and he jerked his head away from Santana. Blaine frowned and turned to look at her. “You’ll help us?”  
  
“I still don’t understand what it is you want me to do.”  
  
“Well, my parents are out of town and of course Noah is forcing me to throw a party, but I thought that . . . I don’t know, maybe if Kurt could come and just hang out with us for the night, he’d stop being so . . .”  
  
“Standoffish?” Blaine supplied, smirking playfully when Rachel snorted.  
  
“That’s putting it mildly.”  
  
Blaine laughed, scratching at the short hairs at the back of his neck. “And what, you want me to convince him to go? There’s no forcing Kurt to do something he doesn’t want to.”  
  
“But do you think he really doesn’t want to or it’s all just part of his act?”  
  
“What don’t I want to do?” Kurt interrupted, dropping a chair loudly between Blaine and Rachel and falling into it, so close to her that she was forced to scoot her chair away.  
  
“Oh, umm . . .” Rachel stammered, looking at Kurt nervously and it amazed Blaine slightly how anxious she seemed to get in Kurt’s presence, as though she wanted so badly to help him that she was trying to be extra careful not to mess up her own efforts.  
  
“Rachel was saying how she wants us to come to a party she’s throwing,” Blaine explained, flashing her a smile.  
  
Kurt snorted and took in a large mouthful of coffee as he planted both his feet firmly on the ground and shoved his chair backward toward Blaine. “Nope, you’re right, not something I would ever want to do.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because somehow I feel like a Rachel Berry house party would involve everyone sitting in a circle while she shows off her trophies and forces everyone to eat vegan appetizers,” Kurt replied, sliding down in his seat until his shoulder leaned against Blaine’s and his feet stretched out in front of him, resting against the legs of Rachel’s chair.  
  
Blaine inhaled at the sudden contact, his gaze slipping up to see Santana noting it with interest before she spoke. “I don’t know. The last one got very interesting.”  
  
“Please.”  
  
“I’m in it for the chance at seeing Rachel and—”  
  
“Santana! Could we not!” Rachel shrieked loudly.  
  
“—going at it again,” Santana finished with a smirk. She gave Kurt a pointed glance, at which he narrowed his eyes in slight displeasure, looking between Blaine and Rachel with a frown.  
  
“Yeah, all right, I’m in.”  
  
“What?” Rachel, exclaimed, sitting up so fast in her seat that she almost toppled over it.  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow in surprise, tilting his head to try to get a good look at Kurt’s face. “Seriously?”  
  
Kurt looked around the table, his face set even though his eyebrows were raised in amusement at the reactions his words had elicited around the table. He gave Rachel a smug look before saying, “Somehow, the possibility of seeing Berry drunk is appealing to me.”  
  
Blaine opened his mouth, staring at Kurt in utter surprise. He met Rachel’s gaze (which was doing a very good job of imitating his own) before glancing at Santana, who was observing the situation with a superior look on her face, making Blaine wary of what she must have been saying to Kurt to get him to so readily agree to hang out with the people that, it seemed, he’d been avoiding.  
  
“You’re serious right now?” he murmured, swallowing hard when Kurt turned to look at him, the proximity of his eyes freezing time.  
  
“Oh, _totally_ ,” Kurt smirked, his eyes glittering like light reflected off moving water, something mischievous and slightly hard in his tone. “Should be _fun_.”  


* * *

  
“I’m not going.”  
  
Blaine frowned at the road, flicking on his turn signal as he adjusted his shoulder to hold his phone to his ear. “Are you kidding me? I’m on my way to meet you.”  
  
Kurt groaned on the other end of the line and Blaine could hear a rustle of movement. “I’m serious, I actually can’t. My bike’s been giving me shit all week and this morning it kicked the bucket. I’m probably going to spend all day tomorrow at the shop trying to get it working again.”  
  
Blaine’s brow furrowed in confusion and he pulled the phone away from his ear to turn on the speaker and check his directions. “I can pick you up,” he answered finally, turning off the main road onto a residential street and passing a cheerful sign welcoming him to Lima.  
  
He bit his lip at the sudden silence on the end of the phone. He thought he could hear faint music in the background, but from Kurt there was complete silence, without even the faintest rustle of movement.  
  
“Kurt?”  
  
“It’s completely out of your way, don’t bother.”  
  
“I’m already in Lima,” Blaine muttered, pulling over to the side of the road and putting the car into park. “So might as well not waste a trip.”  
  
Kurt digested the information for a long time, so long that Blaine almost thought that the line had disconnected and that he was simply sitting in his car with a dead cell phone, stomach churning and mind trying not to jump to irrational conclusions.  
  
“Fine,” Kurt grunted suddenly and the line disconnected. Blaine’s brow furrowed in complete confusion as he stared at the blank screen. He made a movement to call Kurt back, but an instant later his screen lit up again, flashing am address.  
  
Blaine stared at it for a moment, taking it in. He leaned back in his seat, pushing stray curls from his forehead as he stared at the road before him, the engine of his car humming, vibrating quietly beneath him, the music of his radio barely discernible due to how far the radio was turned down.  
  
“I love you,” he murmured softly to the air in front of him and when the words clenched at his heart he took a deep breath and moved to look up the directions to the address that Kurt had given him.  
  
He was lost in thought as he drove, not paying very much attention to his surroundings as he followed the directions on his phone. It wasn’t until he pulled up to the building in question, phone flashing that he’d reached his destination that he took the time to look around.  
  
The parking lot was small and almost completely dark, one lamppost standing in the middle of it, but the dullness of the dying bulb did little to aid in illumination. The building in front of him was a two-story apartment complex, entrances to the apartments facing the parking lot. It was lit only by the handful of working porch lights, three of which flickered ominously, like a threat to die out and leave behind only pitch-black darkness. Even with such poor lighting, Blaine could see that the building posed a constant threat of falling apart. The once-new siding seemed to stand heavy under dirt and grime, reducing the color to a grisly brown. The white porch railings were a dull, dirty grey and peppered with cigarette burns, while in the parking lot used Bud Light cans rolled along the concrete with metallic clanks. Someone was yelling in Spanish in apartment 4D, their voice leaking through the cracked glass of the window. A group lingered near the end of the building, smoke rising from them and the clink of glass bottles sounding through the area whenever the shouting in 4D died down. They looked like high schoolers—two or three wearing bright red letterman jackets—but given their bulk and the darkness, it was difficult to tell.  
  
Blaine could feel their gazes trained on him as he pulled into a space in front of the building number that Kurt had indicated, killing the engine and letting his headlights die out. For a long time he didn’t move, watching the group out of the corner of his eye. He knew those looks, could feel the threat of them bearing down on him and he’d just mustered up the courage to get out of his car when the door he’d parked in front of slammed open with a bang. He jumped, the sound like gunshot. Down the porch, the noise caught the attention of the rest of the group.  
  
“Are you an idiot? Get back in the fucking car!” Kurt growled, glancing up and down the length of the porch, his gaze lingering on the red jackets before he turned around and slammed his door shut so hard that the rotting wood of the railings shook. Blaine froze, watching Kurt locking his door quickly, starting only when Kurt had marched quickly over to the vehicle and wrenched the door open. “Fucking hell, Anderson, do you have a death wish or something?”  
  
Blaine blinked, tearing his gaze away from the group and dropping back down in his seat. He started the engine, flooding the building with light before he pulled out of the lot. Next to him, Kurt sat stiffly in the passenger seat, staring out the window until they’d pulled into the street and his apartment faded into the darkness.  
  
“Kurt—”  
  
“Once, just once, could you maybe fucking _try_ not to be an idiot?” Kurt growled and Blaine could feel his narrowed, angry gaze swivel to land on him. “Jesus, like a fucking _child_ ,” he mumbled under his breath, crossing his arms over his chest and sinking low in his seat.  
  
“Would it be too childish for me to reply, ‘I will if you will?’” Blaine snarled back at him, trying to stay calm but feeling Kurt’s attitude pulling his own frustrations out of him. Before Kurt could reply, he tossed his phone into Kurt’s lap and grunted. “You have to give me directions.”  
  
Kurt stared at the iPhone lying across his thighs, as though it were something completely foreign to him and he let out a long exhale, his head falling back to lean against the headrest. “Fuck, I’m doing it again, aren’t I?” he murmured softly and the change in his voice, from bitter fury to pure _sadness_ was like the wind, sweeping into Blaine and sending him stumbling backward, his own anger dissipating almost instantly. “I just . . . fuck, sorry, I—”  
  
“Directions, Kurt,” Blaine murmured gently over the apology.  
  
“Left at the next light,” Kurt muttered without even looking at the phone. “I just . . . It’s a shithole and those assholes are always hanging around and the last thing I fucking need is for there to be a reason for me to fuck them over—”  
  
“Kurt.”  
  
“—impulse control issues, remember?” Kurt laughed humorlessly, fingers scratching absentmindedly at Blaine’s iPhone cover.  
  
“Is that why you never wanted me to pick you up here?”  
  
Kurt shrugged, biting his lip as he looked out the window. “I don’t bring anyone back there,” he answered, sniffing slightly and rubbing at his nose with the back of his thumb. “It’s too personal. It’s shit and I’m never there but it’s . . . personal. Left here.”  
  
Blaine frowned, flicking on his turn signal and focusing on the smooth turn of his steering wheel, taking in Kurt’s words and trying not to make them mean more than they did but of course his brain was overactive and he pictured things falling apart.  
  
Kurt must have noticed his silence because he shifted in his seat to look at Blaine, his eyes widening. “I don’t . . . shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean . . . fuck, I told you I trust you, so you don’t have to go looking like that,” he exhaled finally and Blaine chanced a quick glance at him, meeting Kurt’s determined gaze. “I just . . . I don’t really trust myself. Especially with you around.”  
  
Blaine glanced quickly back at the empty road in front of him, thinking that the last thing he needed was to crash his car into a tree in the middle of a random Lima neighborhood. Kurt murmured something about Rachel’s house coming up on the right as one of Blaine’s hands dropped from the steering wheel, rising to seek the heat of Kurt’s cheek even as kept his eyes trained for Rachel’s house number. His hand hovered uncertainly and before he could move it further he felt Kurt’s head tilting until his cheek brushed Blaine’s fingertips, like an indication of his need for the contact.  
  
“About the other thing. I’m sorry about that too,” Kurt muttered, almost sheepishly, his gaze fixed down the length of Blaine’s arm as Blaine parked his car across from Rachel’s house and killed the engine.  
  
He looked at Kurt again, this time in utter bewilderment. “What other thing?”  
  
Kurt blinked and pulled out of the touch, leaning his back against the door. “Oh,” he muttered softly, looking surprised that whatever was on his mind hadn’t been bothering Blaine quite as much as, apparently, it’d been bothering him. “No, nothing, never mind.”  
  
“Kurt—”  
  
“No, honestly, it doesn’t matter,” Kurt assured, glancing up at Blaine and smiling suddenly. Blaine was taken aback by how quickly his countenance had shifted into relief and he wondered how often Kurt was haunted by the fear that he would be the one to fuck things up. He wanted to say something, anything reassuring so that he could keep that smile, that bright glow shrouding Kurt forever, but Kurt had popped open his door and stepped out into the cool air before Blaine could say anything. “Let’s get this train wreck started, Anderson!” he yelled through the glass, banging his palm on the hood of Blaine’s car with a grin before setting off across the street with a jaunt in his step, his hips swaying dramatically.  
  
Blaine swore loudly under his breath as his heart leapt toward his throat and he jumped out of the car, sprinting after Kurt and colliding with him, sending them stumbling up Rachel’s front walk, gripping each other’s shoulders to keep from falling over.  
  
On the doorstep Kurt’s laughter died away and he looked at the dark house, deep from within which they could barely discern music booming from the speakers, like the entire party had been locked away in the basement. Blaine laughed quietly to himself, leaning against the door and glancing at Kurt, who had paused at the edge of the step and was looking at the house with an unsure expression on his face.  
  
“Tell me something,” Blaine murmured, pressing the doorbell.  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“If you don’t really want to be here, why did you agree to this?”  
Kurt shrugged, swaying slightly on his feet at the edge of the step. He stuck his hands in his pockets and continued to contemplate the house, like it was something of a past life that had escaped him and, now that he had finally caught up with it, he wasn’t completely sure if he was ready to overtake it. “Someone’s got to keep an eye on you in case Rachel decides that you’d be better for producing vaguely Eurasian children than Finn,” he answered finally with a grin, throwing a wink at Blaine as the door was pulled open to reveal the very person in question, looking awkward and shocked that Blaine and Kurt were loitering on his girlfriend’s front porch.  
  
“You’re here,” he said obviously, looking like Kurt had just pulled back from kissing him.  
  
“Of course we’re here, Gigantor, I said we’d come,” Kurt huffed slightly, unzipping his coat in one smooth, gliding movement and stepping past Finn, tossing it causally at him. “It would have dropped my coolness factor significantly if I’d arrived on time.”  
  
Blaine laughed slightly to himself as he moved into the warmth of the building, casting a curious gaze around the walls, the photographs of a younger Rachel in frilly stage outfits and trophies and standing between two proud men that Blaine could, with some surprise, assume to be her fathers. He dropped his own coat on the pile in the sitting room near the front door and followed Kurt toward the basement stairs, smiling as the music grew exponentially in volume in the staircase.  
  
“Blaine!”  
  
Blaine turned as the sound of his own name rang over the dance music and just as he’d spotted Kurt settling back coolly against the bar near the stairs, observing the group of party-goers nonchalantly despite the slight sense of awkwardness in his stance, he felt his hand being grabbed by a fairly drunk Rachel, who proceeded to pull him into the mass of people dancing in the open space of the room.  
  
“Rachel, hey—”  
  
“Come dance!” she yelled loudly, tugging at his hand hard before lifting it up and twirling slightly underneath it, free hand gripping his shoulder as she stumbled, the alcohol in her veins throwing her off balance. Over her head, Blaine could see Kurt watching them, his mouth downturned in displeasure. He was approached by a bulky guy with a mohawk, who fell against the counter next to him unabashedly, grinning at Kurt and holding out his fist expectantly. The jostle against Kurt’s shoulder tore his gaze away from Blaine and he looked at the fist like the mohawk guy was insane for offering it up, but in the end he exhaled a laugh and shook his head, pressing his own against it and muttering something in response to the greeting that had been offered him.  
  
Blaine was startled out of watching Kurt as Rachel flung an arm around his neck and he was approached from the back by a blonde guy, who looked slightly uncomfortable as he started to dance near them. Blaine threw a questioning look over his shoulder, only to receive a shrug in return.  
  
“Santana sent me over here.”  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow. “Santana?” he muttered, seeking the girl out in the crowd where she was sitting on a washing machine, a blonde girl licking at her neck. “Rachel, what the hell?”  
  
Rachel laughed and pulled back, glancing over her shoulder as well before turning back to him. “Santana thinks that the best way to force Kurt to participate is to make him jealous,” she shrugged, swinging her hips to the beat.  
  
“Make Kurt . . .” Blaine repeated in disbelief, glancing over to where Kurt was still watching him, muttering something to the Mohawk guy with a resigned look on his face. “Okay, this is ridiculous. What’s your name?” he demanded, turning to the blonde guy that was still looking hesitant at closing the distance between their bodies, despite his apparent instructions.  
  
“Sam.”  
  
“Go back to whoever you were dancing with, Sam,” Blaine instructed before turning back to Rachel. “Whatever you may think, we’re not in cahoots. Kurt and I are here, but you’re on your own now. He doesn’t deserve me tricking him into participating, so if that’s what you want you’re wasting your time.”  
  
“Because you love him.”  
  
Blaine started at the bluntness of the statement, looking straight at Rachel to see her smiling at him, the light of her eyes so warm that it seemed as though they had known each other for years, rather than for a few stolen hours at a time over the course of the last month. She laughed slightly at his shock as the music died down and the opening beats to Jessie J’s ‘Domino’ started up. “That’s good. He deserves someone loving him.”  
  
Blaine didn’t get a chance to respond before Rachel was waving Finn over to them and grabbing his hands to start dancing ridiculously to the sound of the music. Blaine stood still for a moment, watching her as amazement at her words coursed through his veins, strangely intoxicating and more warming than alcohol. He smiled as they filled him up and moved him through the crowd until Kurt and the Mohawk guy were in front of him.  
  
 _I’m feeling sexy and free  
Like glitter’s raining on me  
You’re like a shot of pure gold  
I think I'm 'bout to explode_  
  
“Dance with me,” he instructed, moving close and pressing Kurt up against the bar, burying his face in the boy’s neck.  
  
Kurt inhaled, his hands automatically finding their places on Blaine’s hips. “Lost your dance partner, have you? Did she decide you wouldn’t give her good babies after all?” he muttered, trying to sound harsh despite the slight breathiness of his voice. Beside him, mohawk guy snorted and observed them with mild interest, his gaze warm and friendly. Blaine didn’t know him, but he found himself wondering how Kurt could be wary of people who seemed so earnestly insistent on making him feel like family.  
  
 _I can taste the tension like a cloud of smoke in the air  
Now I'm breathing like I'm running cause you're taking me there  
Don't you know? You spin me out of control_  
  
Blaine grinned and pulled away, grabbing one of Kurt’s hands to try to pull him onto dance floor. “Want to dance with you,” he said simply, thumb brushing over the back of Kurt’s and tugging him closer.  
Kurt stared at him for a beat, wrinkling his nose to keep from laughing as Blaine started shaking his shoulders to the beat of the music, singing along to the ‘oohs’ blasting through the stereo system, and he allowed himself to be dragged away from the bar. He pressed in close against Blaine’s back in the small group of people in the room, his nose pressing against Blaine’s neck, but Blaine moved away, grinning cheekily as he grabbed both of his hands and waved them about in a ridiculous manner, mouthing the words to the song as he danced.  
  
Kurt snorted, standing awkwardly in place and rubbing the back of his neck as he stared at Blaine with wide eyes and raised eyebrows, like Blaine was the most absurd, unreal thing he’d ever seen. He glanced around as a black girl pulled Sam over and met her gaze nervously as she started dancing near them. She looked pleased that he had come, but like she wasn’t quite sure what his presence would mean. Her fingers twirled slightly over the palm of her hand in a wave as they joined Kurt and Blaine to form a small dance circle. Kurt stared at her, looking like he had so much to say but couldn’t think of anything in the moment. He settled for a quiet, “Hey, Mercedes,” before his attention was jerked back to Blaine, who pursed his lips along with the ‘ooh ooh ooh oohs’ of the bridge and ducked closer, planting a fleeting peck against Kurt’s lips as the chorus started up again.  
  
 _Rock my world into the sunlight  
Make this dream the best I've ever known  
Dirty dancing in the moonlight  
Take me down like I'm a domino_  
  
Kurt hand flew to cover his mouth, hide his mirth, as though it had melted the last ounce of reserve he had, and he flat out laughed aloud, the sound of it booming over the music and painting smiles on the faces of those who had been observing him anxiously. He caught the beat of the music in the movement of his shoulders, shifting them in a slow shimmy as he danced with Blaine, their eyes fixed on one another as they sang along loudly with the lyrics, just allowing their bodies to merge with the energy of the song.  
  
 _When we touch don't ever let me go  
Dirty dancing in the moonlight  
Take me down like I'm a domino_  
  
Blaine didn’t think he’d ever seen Kurt laughing so much, his movements imitating the lyrics as he pulled Blaine closer, looping his arms around his neck and shaking his hips enthusiastically to the music. There was room between their bodies for the energy that the song elicited, though even the touch of Kurt’s arms wound around his neck sent shivers through Blaine’s body and he wanted more. His hands found Kurt’s waist and he pulled him closer, turning himself under Kurt’s arm to again press his back against Kurt’s chest, gripping Kurt’s wrists where they met around his abdomen, leaning his head back against Kurt’s shoulder. He smiled and closed his eyes as their cheeks brushed together.  
  
They danced like that until the music died away and then they stayed like that even in the silence, Kurt shifting to place an open mouthed kiss to Blaine’s pulse point.  
  
“Blaine,” he murmured, his voice hesitant and slightly breathless, though Blaine wasn’t sure whether it was from the dancing or not. “Blaine, I—”  
  
“Yo, listen up!”  
  
Kurt stopped mid-sentence as the room turned its attention to the bar, upon which Mohawk guy had found it necessary to climb, the remote to the stereo held in his hand and pointed to the source of the music.  
  
“Turn the music back on, Puckerman!” Santana yelled from the laundry machines, where the blonde girl had crawled into her lap.  
  
“I told you guys not to sit on those!” Rachel shrieked, tearing herself away from Finn in a jolt of sobriety.  
  
“Shut _up_!” Puck yelled from his place atop the bar. Blaine snorted as Kurt rolled his eyes and continued to suck lightly against the skin of his neck, obviously uninterested in whatever announcement Puck had to make. “Now, with the second annual Rachel Berry House Party Train Wreck Extravaganza fully underway—”  
  
“Oh, _my God_ , can we stop calling it that!”  
  
“I want to propose another lovely tradition, started by our very own Jewish-American princess herself,” Puck continued with a grin, raising a shot glass to Rachel, who suddenly looked wary of what was about to be suggested.  
  
“So, who’s up for a little game of spin-the-bottle?”  



	21. Chapter 21

“No!”  
  
Blaine choked back his laugh at the tone of Kurt’s yell. He sounded positively scandalized, though definitely more at the idea of the game than that of a bunch of teenagers sticking their tongues down each other’s throat. Blaine bit down on his bottom lip as Kurt stopped kissing his neck and looked up at Puck like he was insane. To Blaine’s surprise, however, Kurt’s shout was accompanied by a small chorus of voices, including Rachel’s, Finn’s and that of a pretty blonde girl, who’d been spending the evening sitting on a sofa in the corner talking to a boy with long, brown dreadlocks and no shoes.  
  
Puck looked around the room, clearly surprised by the response. “Why the fuck not?”

“Because no one here is in the sixth grade!” Kurt called up, resting his chin on Blaine’s shoulder. “Besides, there’s no one else here I feel like making out with,” he murmured to Blaine, biting down lightly at his shoulder.  
  
“Whatever, Hummel,” Puck responded, rolling his eyes.  
  
“Don’t you think it got a little out of hand last time, Noah?” Rachel demanded, leaning against Finn pointedly and poking him in the ribs. He nodded vigorously in agreement.  
  
Her words seemed to perk Kurt’s interest, though, and he turned his attention away from Blaine’s shoulder to look at her, asking, “Out of hand how?” with an evil smirk clearly evident in his voice. At the same time, Santana yelled, “Fuck it, Berry, I’m only here because I want to see Fabray’s tongue down your throat again,” from her corner atop the washing machine.  
  
Kurt seemed to choke on air and Rachel turned beet red, her face disappearing into her hands as she very clearly tried to make herself as invisible as humanly possible. On the couch, the boy with dreadlocks was staring at the pretty blonde girl with pure shock written on his face, while she pressed two fingers to the bridge of her nose, her cheeks tinged with a pretty pink hue.  
  
“Santana, honestly,” she murmured, her voice light and pleasing as a bell.  
  
“Whatever, Quinn, it was hot and that’s saying something considering Berry was involved,” Santana shrugged, tilting her head back to give her companion better access as she stared at Quinn unabashingly. “Don’t pretend that you didn’t enjoy it.”  
  
“I—”  
  
“Out of hand how?” Kurt repeated loudly, his voice eager, his chin a warm, heavy weight on Blaine’s shoulder. His hair tickled Blaine’s cheek as Kurt turned his head to look between Rachel and Quinn, his eyes shining and his lips curving with interest. His arms were bare and warm against Blaine’s stomach, his presence enveloping like a blanket and Blaine could feel his heartbeat, making it extremely difficult to concentrate on the drama of the rest of the room.  
  
Santana smirked at the room. “Rachel wanted to play last time and she spun Quinn and . . . well . . .” Rachel looked mortified, leaning into the reassuring brush of Finn’s thumb against her shoulder and Quinn simply sat where she had been most of the night, watching Rachel carefully, her brows drawn up in a mild expression that Blaine couldn’t read when he looked at her. “Let’s just say they were very enthusiastic about it,” Santana finished, grinning in satisfaction as Quinn licked her lips, her cheekbones the color of magnolia flowers. “I’m pretty sure they would have started dry-humping if Finn hadn’t started freaking out.” She glared at him, shaking her head in mock disappointment.  
  
“Santana, we were drunk, it’s hardly a big deal,” Rachel countered, dropping her hands and attempting to pull together a stance of nonchalance, though her face was still an unnatural shade of red and her forehead were crinkled in embarrassment.  
  
“Then I don’t see the problem,” Kurt stepped in before Santana could throw out a comeback and made a face as every gaze that flew to him in surprise. Blaine snorted in amusement as Kurt grinned evilly at Rachel, his thumbs playing with the hem of Blaine’s cardigan near the zipper of his jeans.  
  
“You don’t even want to play,” Rachel pointed out.  
  
Kurt laughed. “Just because I think it’s a fucking ridiculous form of entertainment doesn’t mean I don’t want to be entertained. I’m voyeuristic like that.”  
  
“Oh, no, Lady Lips,” Santana smirked, detaching herself from the other blonde—Blaine made a mental note to learn all these people’s names—and marching over to the bar, where she grabbed Puck’s half finished bottle of beer and gulped it down, throwing her head back so that her long, raven locks fell over her back in a cascade. Kurt raised an eyebrow at the pause, waiting until she finished with a flourish and tossed the bottle at him. “It’s all or nothing. You watch, you’ve got to play.”  
  
Blaine twisted his head to the side as Kurt’s arms fell away from him to catch the bottle. Kurt stared at it in slight distaste and stepped away, casting a glance between Santana, whose grin as positively satanic as she leaned against the bar, her eyes glittering triumphantly, and Rachel, whose cheeks had almost faded from the rich red of blush to the darkness of her regular complexion, as though he were weighing the pros and cons.  
  
He met Blaine’s gaze, his face dropping slightly from distrust to questioning. Blaine smiled, shrugging to indicated that it didn’t matter to him whether or not they joined in or not, but the motion didn’t seem to answer the question that Kurt was trying to ask, for his brow furrowed further and he continued to watch Blaine carefully.  
  
“Fine,” he said finally, wrenching his gaze away from Blaine’s and tossing the bottle back at Santana.  
  
Hands free, he whirled around to grab Blaine by the wrist and pull him forward, tipping him off balance as Kurt marched them toward the couch. “I swear to God, if you don’t land on me you should prepare to get very well reacquainted with your right hand,” he muttered under his breath.  
  
Blaine whistled. “Damn, possessive much?” he joked.  
  
“You better fucking believe it,” Kurt frowned, wrinkling his nose slightly before pushing Blaine down into a sitting position on the floor with his back against the couch and collapsing against him, his gaze passing expectantly over the shocked members of New Directions.

* * *

  
“I’m not kissing you,” Kurt growled, glaring at the open mouth of the bottle that was pointing at him like it was causing him personal harm.  
  
“Thems the rules, Hummel,” Santana grinned from Blaine’s right and Kurt cast her a dirty look. “You said you were in.”  
  
“I changed my mind.”  
  
“Oh, grow a pair and get on with it. No one else has complained so far.”  
  
“You used a good amount of tongue, by the way, dude,” Puck muttered, glancing over his shoulder to where Mike was lying with his head on Tina’s lap. Mike grinned drunkenly and raised his bottle at Puck with a, “Thanks, man.”  
  
“Can we focus?” Santana demanded, rolling her eyes at them.  
  
“I’m not kissing Finn.”  
  
“Why? You afraid you’ll like it?” Finn asked from across the circle and when Blaine looked up, he was surprised to find the boy grinning at Kurt, his eyes bright and teasing. It was such an easy expression, and it shocked Blaine because it was playful and brotherly in a way that Blaine had always come to expect from Cooper. If he hadn’t known better, he would have been ready to swear that the two of them were related.  
  
There was something incredibly comforting about it, the way in which the entire group, after their own little moments of uncertainty, had dissolved into acting like nothing had changed between themselves and Kurt.  
  
Kurt too looked surprised by the grin on Finn’s face. “If I remember correctly, this time last year you were down in my basement calling me a fag and now you want to make out with me?”  
  
Finn flushed and looked down at his lap. “C’mon, dude, you know I wasn’t talking about you—”  
  
“Oh, right, you were insulting my impeccable interior decorating skills,” Kurt snorted.  
  
“You’re just afraid kissing me will bring back all those _feelings_ you had for me,” Finn grinned suddenly, dodging past dangerous waters and throwing Kurt a smug look.  
  
“I’m actually more afraid that kissing you will turn me off of liking men forever,” Kurt muttered.  
  
“Quit stalling, Hummel,” Santana groaned, falling back into Brittany’s. “Unless this means I win the pool.”  
  
“What pool?”  
  
“Oh, we have a pool going as to whether the rumors about you are true. I say they’re not and you’re still as much of a prude as you always were.”  
  
Finn looked like he wanted to say something defend Kurt, but then his brow furrowed, like he was convincing himself that he and Santana were on the same side. Kurt looked between them in disbelief. “You’re fucking serious right now.”  
  
“Hey, if you’re not man enough, that’s totally cool—”  
  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Kurt groaned and in one swift movement he pushed himself into a seated position. Blaine started to complain about the disappearance of Kurt’s warmth from atop him, his hand rising automatically to pull him back, but Kurt was already out of reach.  
  
He pushed the bottle from the middle of the circle, sending it rolling toward Rachel’s crossed legs and he stretched himself across the circle, grabbing Finn by his polo and pulling him forward, crashing their lips together with no sense of delicacy and grace. Finn let out a startled noise as Kurt thrust his tongue into his mouth unceremoniously, the taller boy’s eyes bugging out in genuine cartoon form as he tried to keep his balance and recover from the shock of being manhandled.  
  
Blaine’s fingers twitched slightly, his arm stretched out away from him on the seat cushions of the couch. He felt something painfully hot stirring in his abdomen and his jaw clenched as he watched Kurt swipe his tongue around Finn’s bottom mouth and couldn’t help suddenly thinking that Kurt was right about this game being ridiculous. To his right, Santana let out a whoop and across the circle from her, Rachel was staring that the action before her with a wide eyes and a slackened jaw, her face turning an unnatural shade of white as Kurt dragged his tongue along the underside Finn’s and pulled a surprised moan out of the other boy.  
  
Blaine suddenly wanted to punch someone and thought that if they didn’t stop soon he thought that person might end up being, despite the fact that Finn was quite literally twice his size and could probably crush him between his thumb and pointer finger.  
  
As though the noise was exactly what he’d been seeking, however, Kurt pulled back, his hand dropping from Finn’s shirt and his teeth dragging on Finn’s bottom lip as he broke the kiss. He breathed hard for a moment before catching Finn’s wide-eyed, shell-shocked expression and smirking, the smug look of pleasure taking over his features as he pushed himself back into a sitting position, collapsing back into the curves of Blaine’s body where he’d been lying before. Finn remained frozen, leaning over toward the center of the circle where he’d been pulled, his mouth opened and working like his brain was trying to catch up to real time.  
  
“Close your mouth and sit back before you hurt yourself,” Kurt grinned teasingly, still something of a self-satisfied smirk running through his voice. Blaine relaxed, very slightly, as Kurt’s warmth against his side dispelled some of the images of Kurt stalking through dark bars, eyes glittering. His arm fell down from the seat cushions of the couch, though, draping across Kurt’s shoulders, his hand fiddling with the material of Kurt’s sleeve.  
  
Finn blinked and sat back, glancing awkwardly across the circle at Rachel.  
  
“I hope you lost a lot of money in that pool, by the way,” Kurt threw out at Santana, who was looking at him with an impressed expression.  
  
She snorted and reached across the circle to grab the bottle that was still lying near Rachel’s legs, the movement startling the brunette slightly. “Please, Hummel, you’re going to have to do better than that to convince me,” Santana grinned, putting the bottle back on the cardboard of the board game they’d set up in the middle of their group and sent it spinning with an easy flick of her wrist. Puck protested that clearly, the display was enough for her to pay him and Kurt snorted, relaxing back against Blaine’s left side. He rested his head on Blaine’s shoulder as he accepted a sloshing cup of some unknown beverage from Mercedes.  
  
Blaine watched as the bottle spun, his side tingling slightly from Kurt’s proximity, the quiet, barely-there pressure of his breathing like helium, filling him up and lifting him away from thoughts of things that surely weren’t there. He could feel Kurt’s small movement, his low, sympathetic whistle when the bottle stopped spinning, open end pointed at Quinn, and Santana’s eyes gleamed with pleasure as she leaned forward.  
  
Blaine felt himself sliding into a half reclined position as the game progressed, finding himself indifferent to the group as the bottle spun and never seemed to land on him. Brittany landed on the small boy with a heavy Irish accent and placed a light peck on his cheek before dropping back against Santana’s side with a giggle. Puck grabbed the bottle after that, usurping another turn, and landed on Quinn and, while she had been reserved and had pulled away before Santana could think to try anything, she kissed Puck gently, one hand smoothing over the short stubble of his cheek before pulling away and smiling at him, her eyes twinkling intimately. Kurt slid unconsciously closer as they watched, left hand bending at the elbow to play absentmindedly with the fingers of the hand over his shoulder, tilting his head to run his tongue along the skin. After a ridiculous display from Sam and Artie, the boy with dreadlocks (Joe) politely declined his turn—Kurt grunted in annoyance when nobody even batted an eyelash—and the bottle passed to Rachel, who looked at it warily, like she were warning it not to betray her, before sending it spinning.  
  
Santana sat up eagerly as the bottle slowed and the trio of Rachel, Quinn, and Finn looked anticipatory. The rest of the group watched with the same general interest and enthusiasm they’d afforded any other time the bottle was spinning, and after being forced to kiss Finn, Kurt seemed rather indifferent to the whole game. His apathy vanished and he stiffened almost instantly, however, as the bottle slowed to a halt, pointing directly at Blaine and a loud whoop of noise sounded from several members of the group.  
  
“Jesus fuck, this game has to rigged,” he muttered under the noise as Blaine stared at the bottle in surprise, raising his eyes after a beat to look at Rachel, who looked taken aback at the outcome, her mouth still open, the alcohol in her veins flashing the light of amusement in her eyes.  
  
“Okay, hobbits, let’s get this Lord of the Rings moment on,” Santana called over her cup when neither Blaine nor Rachel made any sort of movement. Her voice seemed to remind Rachel of the game, jolting her out of whatever place her mind had taken her to and her eyes began to twinkle playfully and she held up a hand crooking one finger toward herself.  
  
“Blaine Warbler, are you prepared to have your world rocked?”  
  
Blaine snorted at her tone, lighthearted and coy, mindful of the gaming aspect of the matter and he rolled his eyes, nudging his shoulder slightly as he sat up and Kurt moved off of him, his shoulders slightly tense and his gaze displeased. Blaine raised his eyebrows in amusement as Rachel leaned over, slightly unsteadily and waggled her own at him before she reached out a hand to the back of his neck and, with a laugh that almost broke the kiss before it even got started, pressed her lips against his.  
  
His eyes fell closed on instinct. It was an interesting feeling. The last time he’d kissed a girl was in junior high school (seventh grade to be precise), on a dare to prove that he wasn’t gay, though he’d ironically wound up proving to himself that he was.  
  
Rachel’s lips were soft against his, the pressure strangely delicate. She tasted like pink as she licked lightly against his lips, for lack of a better word, like the wine coolers she’d insisted on drinking for most of the night and the scent of her perfume, the same one that Cooper’s girlfriend from several years back had always doused herself in, filled his senses. He opened his mouth at the light swipe her tongue, letting her lick into his mouth insistently and he reciprocated, his hand rising up, palm brushing over the smoothness of her cheek before it threaded into her hair and he found himself thinking that while it wasn’t unpleasant, it was . . . lacking. He could only imagine they were putting on a show, though, because from his right, someone—he was certain it was Puck—wolf-whistled loudly and Santana let out a soft noise of appreciation.  
  
But it did nothing at all for him, the only thrill shooting from his body coming as a result of Kurt’s voice as he yelled loudly, “Hey, ladies, this isn’t seven minutes in heaven, so unless you want to get in a fucking closet . . .”  
  
Rachel broke away from him then, pulling back until she was in focus and giving him a quirked half-smile, her eyes twinkling and her cheeks tinged the color of the alcohol she’d been consuming. “So, Warbler,” she grinned, her bangs falling messily into her eyes. “Still gay?”  
  
Blaine frowned, his brow furrowing in mock thought as he looked at her, tilting his head to look at the ceiling as he licked his lips thoughtfully. “You know, I can’t be sure,” he replied, a touch of a smile on his face, his voice just loud enough for the group to hear.  
  
Rachel raised her eyebrow, the corners of her eyes crinkled slightly. Blaine shrugged nonchalantly before making the motion to drop back into his seated position. Kurt downed his drink before tossing the cup away and flashing an annoyed glare toward Blaine. “Want me to tell you what you can be sure of?” he started, a grow of warning in his voice, but his words cut off by a startled noise as Blaine, midway through falling back against the couch, grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him forward, smashing their lips together.  
  
Kurt’s breath hitched as gravity and momentum sent him falling against Blaine, his mouth opening instinctively to gasp as he collapsed down on Blaine. The noiseless inhalation quickly turned into a moan as Blaine thrust his tongue hard into Kurt’s open mouth, the movement harsh and needy for a brief movement before it calmed into something of a gentleness, though without the loss of any of its intensity.  
  
Blaine laughed softly into Kurt’s mouth as Kurt froze at the unexpected movement, the hand twisted in the fabric of his shirt tugging him forward insistently until Kurt was in his lap, one leg swinging over to Blaine’s other side to straddle his hips, Blaine’s other hand tangling in the denim of his belt loops. He licked a long, hard stripe along the underside of Kurt’s tongue and, as though there was some sort of trigger, Kurt let out a long moan and every muscle in his body seemed to loosen as he pushed back suddenly, twisting his tongue around Blaine’s to suck it back into his own mouth as he leaned over Blaine, his knees pressing in tightly against Blaine’s thighs.  
  
Blaine groaned as Kurt sucked around his tongue, his head forced back against the seat cushions of the couch as Kurt kissed him with a fierce determination, his mouth insistent and drawing the very breath out of Blaine, his nerves tingling pleasurable all the way down his spine. He let go of Kurt’s shirt and twisted his fingers around the hair at the back of Kurt’s neck, swallowing Kurt’s protest at his hair getting messed up as he scraped his teeth over Kurt’s bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth and pushing Kurt closer until the boy was forced to hold himself up, hands positioned on the couch just behind Blaine’s shoulders. Kurt let out a noise and deepened the intensity of the kiss, all tongue and teeth and a desperation that shot sparks through Blaine, filling in everything that had been missing when he’d been kissing Rachel and he was filled suddenly with an uncontrollable need that seemed to shroud the remainder of the room in a cloud of fog, the only clear thing the pressure of Kurt’s knees as he straddled him, the heat of his body, the faint smell of cologne mixed in with the salty smell of sweat. The taste of Kurt against him, mixed with the fading flavor of cigarette smoke, peppermints and Diet Coke, presumably from the drink that he’d been handed after his own turn.  
  
Blaine felt heady from it, from the sudden feeling of need and want that attacked him as Kurt hovered over him and gave into the forgetfulness that he himself had fallen into, their tongues battling for dominance between them as Blaine could feel the pulse of his blood pulled southwards and another groan was ripped from him at the growing tightness in his jeans, his hips thrusting up seeking something—pressure, friction, release, just _more_ and _Kurt_.  
  
Kurt swore loudly, his breath coming out in airless gasps as he nibbled at Blaine’s lips, grinding his hips down against Blaine’s, the increasing hardness of his erection shooting sparks and pushing blood further down to Blaine’s. Kurt’s hands roamed all over his body, insistent as his fingers scraped against the fabric of his T-shirt, his hips jolting up against the hardness of Kurt’s cock above him as Kurt’s hand slipped under the waistband of Blaine’s jeans, his hand shockingly cool against Blaine’s heated skin, pushing his hips up further.  
  
“Hey, how about we keep things PG, huh guys?”  
  
“Oh, my god, shut _up_!” Santana yelled over Finn’s strangled objection.  
  
Kurt let out a noise and broke away with a gasp, his hips stilling over Blaine’s, his eyes a beautiful shade of midnight blue as he tried to catch his breath, staring back at Blaine with his mouth open in surprise at what had happened. Blaine’s eyes widened at his own reflection in Kurt’s, curls askew and golden eyes dark with want. He let out a noise of frustration at the interruption, at the group of people clustered around them more than the fact that they’d gotten so carried away. His blood still swam with the strength of his need, his lungs craving the air that couldn’t come fast enough.  
  
“I’m so turned on right now,” Brittany whispered loudly to Santana as she leaned against her and at her words Kurt let out a breathy laugh, his eyes closing as he smiled and shook his head to himself before looking back at Blaine, the expression in his eyes startlingly warm.  
  
“Yeah,” Blaine breathed, his voice coming out gruffer than he thought it would and he cleared his throat, his eyes still fixed on the depth of Kurt’s, though the thought of the New Directions still tugged at the back of his mind. “I am . . .” he started quietly, his voice so soft that only Kurt could hear. His eyes crinkling curiously as he ascertained Kurt, smiling suddenly. “Definitely gay,” he said louder, angling his head to look over at Rachel with a light smirk on his face.  
  
His gaze was jerked away from her expression by a punch against his arm as Kurt half slid off his lap, one leg still cast over Blaine’s lap, the weight of his knee heavy against Blaine’s erection, forcing Blaine to channel every ounce of strength he had into not rutting up against it.  
  
“Fuck you, you planned that,” Kurt growled, his voice breathless and hot against Blaine’s ear, his own erection firm against Blaine’s hip.  
  
“Really?” Blaine muttered, trying to keep the groan out of his voice. “I make you with you and all I get is a ‘fuck you,’ that’s so _rude_ ,” he gasped as Kurt nibbled at his earlobe. His gaze passed to the other members of New Directions, wishing they would become absorbed with something— _anything_ —else. “Whose turn is it?” he demanded, perhaps a little too loudly, startling the girls (all except for Santana) to flushing deep shades of scarlet and Tina into grabbing the bottle and spinning it quickly, keeping her eyes fixed on the smooth movement.  
  
“Yeah, well now I’m just horny as fuck.”  
  
“We can go if you want.”  
  
The teasing scrape of teeth against his ear paused and Kurt pulled away slightly. When Blaine looked at him, he was watching the game with a furrowed gaze, curiously looking from the whooping crowds that seemed to have forgotten about them to the edge of the circle where Artie and Mike were eagerly performing the duties of the game. He bit his lip, his brows drawn up together and his eyes a startlingly sad shade of blue. “I . . . umm . . .” he frowns, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “Not yet,” he admitted after a beat, leaning his weight against Blaine’s shoulder as he continued to watch the group.  
  
“Then I hope you have a solution, because despite what just went down, I actually don’t have a huge exhibitionist kink,” Blaine teased.  
  
“Well . . .”  
  
“Also, not the biggest fan of having sex in other people’s houses.”  
  
Kurt shifted against him and Blaine could practically feel the smirk forming on his lips as his limbs relaxed. “Now, there’s a thought . . .”  
  
“No.”  
  
“But Blaine, the thought of having sex in Rachel Berry’s house is _very_ appealing.”  
  
“Good joke.”  
  
“Oh, my God, _or_ ,” Kurt laughed suddenly, drawing Santana’s gaze toward them as his palm slapped the inside of Blaine’s thigh. He looked back and laughed again, dissolving into an uncontrollable bout of giggles as he buried his face in Blaine’s shoulder. “In her room,” he managed to finally choke out between bursts of mirth.  
  
Blaine choked back a laugh. “Kurt—”  
  
“—in her _bed_ —”  
  
“We’re not doing anything in Rachel’s room!”  
  
“What are you not doing in my room?” Rachel exclaimed suddenly, her voice pierced with alarm as her head flew up to gaze at them, the action dissolving Kurt into another fit of giggles.  
  
“Nothing, aren’t you paying attention?” Kurt snorted, a hand flying up to cover his face as he twisted his body toward Blaine, his eyes scrunched up in his laughter, his knee digging further into the uncomfortable tightness of Blaine’s jeans that was absolutely refusing to die down.  
  
Kurt exhaled at the feel of it, at the reminder, his laugh dying down in his throat and when he looked at Blaine there was something in his gaze, in the dark twinkle of his eye that turned the curves of his lips into a wolfish expression and a beat later, before Blaine could even process it, he had risen smoothly to his feet, his hand falling to find Blaine’s and pull him along with.  
  
“Where are you going?” Rachel demanded, sitting up ramrod straight at Blaine allowed Kurt to pull him to his feet, the other boy’s finger slotting in between his own, his grip tight and riddled with urgency. “ _Kurt_!”  
  
“Got to use the little boy’s room, calm the fuck down,” Kurt replied, snark forced over a new bout of laughter that threatened to overtake him.  
  
“Oh, my God!” Rachel yelled behind them as Kurt quickened his pace, sniggering like a child and tugging insistently as Blaine nearly tripped up the stairs. “You’re not . . . what are you . . . Kurt! _Kurt_! Finn, _do_ something!”  
  
They’d just barely made it out of Rachel’s basement, Puck’s triumphant yell of, “Pay the fuck _up_ , Lopez!” echoing behind them when Kurt whirled him around and forced him against the wall, his laughter knocked out of him by the press of Kurt’s body against his own, the attack of his lips against the tendons of Blaine’s neck.  
  
“Kurt,” he breathed out, moan riding on his exhale like a wave as Kurt’s hand threaded in the curls at the base of his neck, tugging his head back sharply for better access, all merriment seemingly forgotten. His hand gripped the banister just to his left for purchase. “No exhibitionist kink, remember?”  
  
Kurt pulled away, gasping slightly for breath as his eyes flickered down the stairs. “I’m sure we can do something about that,” he shrugged, winking evilly before dragging Blaine down the hallway, opening and slamming doors in quick succession until he found a bathroom and pulled the both of them inside. He fell back against the sleek, marble counter, pulling Blaine toward him, his feet twisting around Blaine’s ankles to send him stumbling against Kurt, the full weight of his body pressing Kurt against the counter. Kurt let out a groan as the movement slotted their erections together, his hands winding around Blaine’s neck as he rocked his hips up, his lips attacking Blaine’s with a shockingly urgent need. Blaine moaned against him in the darkness, electricity exploding through his spine, his finger seeing in the darkness, the door closed and the light never turned on.  
  
“Blaine,” Kurt mumbled, his voice already wrecked, his hands reaching through the darkness as Blaine pulled away, searching for the light switch. The name was repeated like a mantra, breathless and heady and heated.  
  
He blinked as the light flickered on and Blaine was back against him, the weight of his heat pressing him against the counter.  
  
“Turn around,” Blaine growled, rotating his hips against Kurt, his tongue swirling along Kurt’s pulse point, flicking over the curve of Kurt’s Adam’s apple as the boy inhaled and swallowed thickly at the idea. His eyes flickered shut as he felt the weight of Blaine’s hands on his hips, a steady pressure turning him around until the curve of his back was slotted perfectly against Blaine’s chest, Blaine’s arms wrapped around his torso and he could feel, with every miniscule movement, the hardness of Blaine’s erection pressing up against his ass, flooding his very bones with a knee-buckling heat.  
  
“Blaine,” Kurt whined, arching back against the feeling, the one that liquefied his muscles like a tidal wave washing away the sands of a beach, his eyes fluttering shut and his head falling back against Blaine’s shoulder.  
  
Blaine watched him in the mirror, the long, pale line of his neck as his head stretched back, skin smooth and tempting the scrape of his teeth. His hands skimmed at the clasp of Kurt’s belt, marveling at the curve of his spine as he sought those flashes of fire that turned the steady rhythm of his blood into waterfalls. One hand brushed with the strangest delicacy along Kurt’s belt, fingers twisting in a belt loop, the other tantalizingly making its way through the row of tiny buttons lining Kurt’s black vest, pushing its sides apart and thumbing at a nipple underneath the thin, white cotton.  
  
He marveled at the way Kurt’s breath hitched, his eyes squeezing shut in pleasure, his body curving to the sensation. The lightest of porcelain pinks flooded his cheeks and his mouth was open, little gasps of air passing through his parted lips.  
  
“Open your eyes,” Blaine murmured against Kurt’s neck, rubbing his thumb over Kurt’s nipple. Kurt inhaled, just barely soundless and his eyes fluttered open at the clink of his own belt.  
  
“Not a kinky fucker, my ass,” he muttered, his eyes the deepest of midnight blues, his breath catching as, on cue, Blaine’s arm wrapped around his chest and he rocked forward against Kurt’s ass.  
  
“I never said that,” Blaine smirked, flicking open the button of Kurt’s jeans, his molten gold gaze locked with Kurt’s in the mirror. “I just said I didn’t have a huge exhibitionist kink.”  
  
“See there you go again with the large adjectives and I’ve been finding it really hard not to misbehave in front of the Nude Erections.”  
  
“The _what_?”  
  
“Oh, you know that was your first— _Jesus_!” Kurt exclaimed, eyes slamming shut and hips arching forward as Blaine’s hand wrapped around the base of his erection, moving his hand slowly upward, the friction exquisite, as he ground his cock against Kurt’s ass in rhythm with the motion of his hand.  
  
“Kurt,” Blaine murmured, breathing out against the shell of Kurt’s ear, his voice strangely firm as he swiped a thumb over the head of Kurt’s cock, gathering the precome there. Like it was part of an unspoken command, Kurt’s eyes opened again and he stared at Blaine, his gaze dark and hooded with an unabashed want. He whined, the high-pitched noise dropping from his lips like from the edge of a precipice, his eyes fluttering but staying open, as Blaine pumped him thoroughly, movement firm and rhythmic and in time with the rolling motions of his hips, each twist of his wrist near the head of Kurt’s cock cutting off the moaning flow of _fucks_ and _Blaines_ and _Jesus, mores_.  
  
It burned through Blaine’s bones, the sudden acquirement of control, a newly awakened want that pulsed heat through his whole body.  
  
Blaine could feel it when Kurt got close, when his voice shook and his body shivered. “Love this,” Blaine muttered, biting down on Kurt’s collarbone, his gaze fixed with Kurt’s in the mirror, fire burning against the depth of oceans. He stilled his hand, thumb stroking hard up a prominent vein, groaning at the strain in his pants as Kurt’ keened loudly, his cheeks flushed and temples beaded with sweat “Jesus, I want . . .”  
  
“ _Blaine_.”  
  
“Christ, I want to fuck you so bad—” he muttered, voice cut off as Kurt’s body stiffened with a groan, his hand flying over his shoulder to wrench Blaine’s head back and slam their mouths together, the kiss a messy clash of tongue and teeth as Kurt came, his hips thrusting up into Blaine’s fist, spilling over Blaine’s hand and the mirror in front of them in long, thin streaks.  
  
Blaine groaned as Kurt’s teeth bit down hard on his bottom lip, his face pressed firmly against Blaine’s, nose crushed against Blaine’s, releasing it only as he released his bated breath, his chest heaving as the shocks riding through his body calmed.  
  
He gasped against Blaine’s mouth, his eyes furrowed shut before he turned his head toward the mirror, dropping it back against Blaine’s shoulders and staring at Blaine over his cheekbones, his lips parted and his eyelashes fanned and long. Blaine reveled in the weight of his body as they leaned forward against the counter, struggling to hold each other up as the tremors of tension melted away from Kurt’s body.  
  
Coming down from his high, he stared at Blaine with that strange little ascertaining look, the same one he’d given the group when Blaine had asked him if he wanted to leave, like he was hovering at the edge of something, but waiting for a gust of wind to force fate out of his hands.  
  
“You okay?” Blaine murmured, planting an open-mouthed kiss against Kurt’s neck, angling his hips again against Kurt’s ass, a plea for pressure and release.  
  
Kurt inhaled at it, as though he had somehow forgotten and the little flame of uncertainty in his eyes flickering out as his gaze grew mischievous again, a split second of change before he turned around, winding an arm around Blaine’s neck and planting a swift peck to his lips, ducking away with an easy chuckle as Blaine leaned forward to follow him. Blaine grunted in annoyance, the looseness of Kurt’s post-orgasmic limbs a slow, torturous tease. Kurt repeated the motion, free hand settling on Blaine’s hip to start steering him backward before his knees hit the plastic of a toilet seat cover and he toppled backward onto it, barely getting the time to laugh in relief that the cover was down before Kurt was straddling him again, his kisses slow and wet and dirty, his tongue working over the inside of Blaine’s mouth as though he were trying to memorize it.  
  
Blaine moaned, hips flying upward as Kurt’s palm flattened roughly over the bulge in his jeans, the pleasure rolling heat through his spine. His eyes flew shut, the skin of his cheek where Kurt’s other hand was splayed out to hold him in place, the pads of his fingers spread from his temple until just below his ear. He thrust up again into the tantalizing, constant pressure of Kurt’s palm grinding down on his cock, the slow build of fire burning through his muscles, like attempting to start one by rubbing two sticks together, and he was just about to explode from the lack of relief, biting down hard on Kurt’s lip with an impatient grunt of the boy’s name.  
  
Kurt simply laughed, the pads of his fingertips pressing into the muscles of Blaine’s neck and he suddenly pulled away, flew in quickly for a peck before falling back swiftly onto his feet, his eyes glittering evilly despite the flush that had melted back into his cheeks.  
  
“Okay, well, have fun, I’m going back downstairs,” he smirked, his voice breathy but confident. Blaine gaped at him as he zipped his pants up and twirled gracefully on his heel.  
  
“Kurt, what the fuck?” Blaine demanded, gesturing toward the visible tenting in his jeans when Kurt paused near the doorway to glance over his shoulder, his smirk wolfish.  
  
“Oh, I’m sure you’ve got a firm grip on the situation,” Kurt answered, fixing his hair in the mirror, his mouth in a flat line the minute he finished speaking, like a wall to keep the laughter from spilling out of him.  
  
“You cannot be serious,” Blaine gaped at him.  
  
“Hey, I did warn you that you’d have to get reacquainted with your right hand—”  
  
“If I spun anyone else.”  
  
“Oh, I thought that also implied if you made out with anyone else . . .” Kurt muttered, his brow furrowing in mock concern at the shards of his reflection between drying streaks of come, trying to get a stray hair to stay up with the rest of them. “Always read the fine print, my friend,” he grinned smugly before easing himself out of the bathroom.  
  
“Are you . . . Kurt! Get the fuck back here!” Blaine yelled, head falling back against the wall with a disbelieving groan.  
  
“Don’t forget to clean up after yourself, dear!”

* * *

  
“Hi, honey, you’re back,” Kurt purred from where he was sitting in a group with Puck, Santana and Tina as Blaine made his way back down to Rachel’s basement. Blaine made a face at him, but it was ignored as Kurt put down the cards in his hand, an action that elicited a loud swear from Puck and a victorious noise from Santana as Puck proceeded to pull his shirt over his head and toss it on the couch behind him. In the corner, Rachel was arguing with a girl named Sugar over the karaoke machine and the remainder of the glee club was scattered about the room, either engaged in some drinking games or curled up on the couch watching Rachel and Sugar like they were the highest form of entertainment. “Want to help me win at strip poker?”  
  
“He’s two rounds behind, he’ll have to ditch some clothes to join,” Santana muttered, staring intently at the cards she’d been dealt.  
  
“Please, Tina and I are still dressed,” Kurt responded, dismissing the comment before glancing up at Blaine cheerfully. “What do you say, babydoll?”  
  
“You think you’re _so_ cute,” Blaine muttered as he made his way to the couch and stood over the group, brow furrowed at the game that was going on, holding back a smile as he took in the small circle of players, wherein only Tina and Kurt were fully clothed, Puck was without a shirt and Santana, who had apparently lost her dress early in the game.  
  
“I’m adorable,” Kurt countered, flashing up what Blaine was sure was meant to be a charming smile, though the effect was somewhat lost when the boy’s eyes couldn’t help but twinkle evilly. When Blaine raised an eyebrow in his direction, his expression faltered ever so slightly and he reached up a hand to tangle his fingers in Blaine’s, the tenderness apology of the motion countered by the exaggerated way in which he stuck his lip out dramatically. He did, though, have it in him to look guilty. “Admit it, Blainey—”  
  
“Oh, God, _stop_ ,” Blaine groaned dramatically, his head falling forward into a chuckle. “Cutesy endearments do not suit you.”  
  
Kurt continued to pout, swinging their linked hands back and forth until Santana groaned, “Oh, for the love of God, sit down and stop stalling the game. Hummel, let’s go.”  
  
“You’re not going to win your money back. I’m going to win your money, so there’s no rush,” Kurt countered smoothly, grinning when Blaine rolled his eyes and dropped down into a seated position beside Kurt. “Here, play for me,” he instructed, thrusting his cards into Blaine’s hand before pulling up close to Blaine’s side. His fingers flickered over an area of Blaine’s neck before he eased himself under Blaine’s arm and planted a kiss to Blaine’s cheek before lapping his tongue at a spot near Blaine’s ear.  
  
Blaine grunted, his mind protesting, his focus forced to the cards but he could feel himself melting back against the couch, his head tilting as though to ascertain the cards but the action it stretched his neck slightly in the process, exposing it to the boy that crawled under his skin and wouldn’t even allow him to pretend to be angry. “What’re you doing?”  
  
“Making it up to you.”  
  
“You’re distracting me.” The cards made little sense in his head, his nerves swimming.  
  
“You two are sickening,” Santana muttered, glancing between her cards and Puck as though attempting to read his mind.  
  
“I’m doing this for you, Tana. I feel bad that you lost so much money on me and besides maybe we’ll get the bonus of my boyfriend having to take his clothes off,” Kurt grinned, his nose pressed flat against Blaine’s neck, missing the way his word choice lodged Blaine’s heart in his throat, it’s solidity stealing air from lungs.  
  
“Honey, unless your boyfriend has boobs and a vagina, which I doubt giving both your hard ons earlier, I’m really not interested. I’ll raise,” Santana muttered absentmindedly.  
  
Kurt paused at that, resting his chin on Blaine’s shoulder to stare at her. “So you’re actually . . . ?”  
  
“Did you miss the show tonight?”  
  
“Shit, I knew it!”  
  
Santana rolled her eyes. “Not exactly hard to pick up on.”  
  
“No, I _knew_ it. Ages ago,” Kurt countered and Blaine could pick up from his tone the way his eyes were shining, like they were reflecting sunlight off of water. “When you joined.”  
  
“You’re kidding,” Santana replied in surprise, turning to look at him.  
  
“I thought my gaydar was malfunctioning or just like, unaccustomed to being used,” he snorted, picking up his drink and taking a long gulp from it, his eyes trained on her when he’d finished and leaned back against Blaine, exhaling softly. “Shit.”  
  
Santana laughed softly before throwing her arms in the air triumphantly, the movement throwing her off-balance slightly as Puck groaned and leaned over to strip of his socks and toss them on the couch, just missing hitting Blaine in the head with them. Kurt shook his head, his hair tickling Blaine’s neck like a feather and he seemed about to go back to paying electrifying amounts of attention to Blaine’s neck when Mercedes dropped in beside him and pulled him away from Blaine, her arms wrapping around him and his startled noise disappearing into the lacy fabric of her shirt.  
  
“Kurtsie, baby, I love you,” she muttered loudly, her words slurring together, slipping over each other like a paintbrush spreading paint over a canvas. Blaine chuckled, wordlessly accepting his new cards from Puck before glancing back at the moment, at the way Kurt’s muscles, stiffening after the attack, came undone and a hand reached up tentatively to pat reassuringly at Mercedes’s shoulder blades. She pulled away and planted a sloppy kiss on his cheek, grinning and murmuring, “I miss you don’t be a stranger,” reprimandingly at him while she allowed Sam to pull her up and walk her out to her car.  
  
“I’ll raise,” Blaine muttered, frowning at his cards before looking back up at Kurt, who was still sitting in the position that Mercedes had pulled him into, staring at the place where they’d disappeared up the stairs, that expression back on his face. Like he could see through a mirage, could see invisible walls being dismantled and he was trying to decide whether he wanted to help or try to keep them up. He blinked, his brow furrowing as he turned to look toward the stage where Rachel and Sugar were still bickering and to their own little circle and finally Blaine. His gaze rested there, passing over Blaine’s face like the pages of a book that he enjoyed reading. He took a deep breath, the kind one would take with a flower pressed to one’s nose, to take in as much of a beautiful, heady scent as one could  
  
Blaine smiled at him, setting his cards face down on the carpet as Puck took a particularly long time deliberating his move. The movement seemed to startle Kurt and his brow unfurrowed as Blaine met his gaze, his lips quirking up into a half smile and he fell back into his spot beside Blaine, the curve of his chin resting on Blaine’s shoulder as he brushed his nose against Blaine’s ear. “Do you want to go?”  
  
Blaine snorted, shifting his arm so that Kurt was able to fit in the space between it and Blaine’s body. “I don’t know. When I wanted to go, you took me to the bathroom, let me jerk you off and then left me,” he responded, pouting dramatically even though he wasn’t quite sure Kurt could see it from that angle. “Why would I want to leave when you do?”  
  
Kurt didn’t answer. Blaine could feel his breath, could hear the subtle sound of him licking his lips in his hesitation before he murmured, “Because I heard you’re not a fan of having sex in other people’s houses.”  
  
“Oh, now you want to have sex with me?” Blaine teased, turning his head to smirk at Kurt but stopping as Kurt leaned forward and whispered, his voice barely holding any sound in it, like he was afraid of his own words, “I want you to fuck me.”  
  
Something stuttered in Blaine’s pulse and he pulled away, flashing Kurt a slightly confused look. His voice got caught in his throat, Kurt’s determined gaze watching him carefully. “You don’t bottom,” he responded, his voice low.  
  
Kurt bit his lip, the pull of skin beneath teeth giving him a wildly youthful appearance. “No,” he confirmed softly, his mouth barely moving, but his gaze never faltered. “But . . . I want . . . with you . . .” he murmured, faltering slightly as he said the words, his eyes widening.  
  
Blaine wasn’t sure how long they sat looking, how long until his vision mixed with the dark, determined blue of Kurt’s eyes, the thrum of the crowd mixing with that of his own blood as he tried to figure out what it meant, if anything at all. He blinked as Santana yelled his name, yelled at him to take his fucking turn already and he grinned suddenly. Kurt’s eyes widened at the expression, a little less hopeless at jumping and not tripping over his own feet.  
  
“I’ll fold,” Blaine said quickly, so rushed the words almost came out as one and he pushed his cards toward the center of the circle in one swift movement, grabbing Kurt’s arm as they both stood. On their feet, he glanced up at Kurt, reveling a little in the height difference and grinned, the nerves at the very tips of his toes and fingertips tingling. Kurt tipped onto his toes slightly, raising himself further above Blaine, his eyes twinkling.  
  
“Hold on a sec, yeah?” he asked, his voice slightly breathless and before Blaine could say anything, Kurt was moving around him, easing his way past the small clumps of people to the stage, interrupting Rachel mid-rant about the quality of Broadway music and the (lack thereof) of Sugar’s voice with a squeeze on the hand and the murmur of, “This doesn’t change anything, but it was fun.”  
  
She looked at him, startled, and when Kurt flashed her a grin, genuine and bright down to the expression in his eyes, Blaine could see them. Could see them both as they could have been and maybe as they once had been. It was brief, ending with a parting nod and a farewell of, “Bye, honey,” to Sugar, light and friendly and fleeting before he turned to go and regained the countenance of the man he’d become, but with something lighter and more alive.  
  
“It’s actually Sugar! Sugar Motta!” Sugar called after him and his nose crinkled in confusion as he approached Blaine, taking advantage of the height difference to fling an arm around Blaine’s shoulders to steer him toward the stairs to the basement.  
  
“Motta? As in Al Motta of Motta’s Pianos?” Blaine asked, twisting around to take a closer look at the girl.  
  
“Blaine, priorities,” Kurt muttered sternly, nipping playfully at his ear before ducking back behind him to press two hands to his lower back and pushing him quickly up the stairs and into the cool, late January air outside.


	22. Chapter 22

Blaine drummed his fingers lightly against his steering wheel, turning his head to look at Kurt, who was staring intently at his own front door. “So, are we going in or are we planning on sitting here all night?”  
  
Kurt frowned, his gaze still trained on the door before he nodded briefly. “Stay in the car,” he murmured softly, his hand reaching for the door handle.  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow. “Going to leave me hanging twice in one night?” he asked, his voice teasing, but just slightly wary.  
  
Kurt licked his lips, his gaze still scanning over the dirty wood of his front door, the precarious sway of the number nailed to it, like it would fall off with a strong enough breeze. “No, that’s not it. I just . . . going to make sure they’re not around,” he replied quietly, more to himself to Blaine and he popped the door open quickly, swinging his legs onto the pavement. “Stay here,” he repeated before ducking out of the car and slamming the door shut. He walked swiftly toward his door, hand thrusting into his pocket and pulling out a small ring of keys. His shoulders were hunched, as though against the wind, but Blaine could tell he was trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible, despite the fact that not a soul could be spotted on the long stretch of pavement in front of the building.  
  
He fiddled quickly with the lock, his gaze focused intently on where his key fit smoothly into it and when the door popped open he waved at the car, his gaze directed down the row of doors to where empty bottles and cigarette butts were the only remnants of the group that had lingered there earlier, and a baseball cap hanging on a nail in the rotting wood of the porch rail was the only indication that they might be back.  
  
He stepped in quickly after Blaine passed him, leaning against the door to ensure that it was closed properly, his hands fiddling with a series of locks before turning to Blaine. His hands rose to work the buttons of his coat, mechanically as he watched Blaine, as though he were trying to give them something to do. Blaine smiled reassuringly at him before glancing around the apartment, his curiosity capturing him.  
  
It was small, tiny and dingy in a way that held in it an attempt to clean and make home-like, but without much effect. The single room was spread out in front of him, cramped depite the small amount of furniture in it, the kitchen bleeding through to the main room. The only thing separating the two sections was a worn, vintage-looking room divider, just hiding an unmade futon from view, the corner of a white sheet tangling centimeters from the ground.  
  
There was something about it, Blaine knew that as he looked from the old trunk sitting between the futon and the window, masquerading as a makeshift coffee table, to the kitchen, little and grimy with barely enough room to move around. It was small, all so small and that was what seemed to strike Blaine most about it. Small and plain, two things that Kurt was certainly not and he wondered how it was that Kurt fit in there without going mad. Whether he even did.  
  
He glanced over his shoulder and Kurt made a face, his brows furrowed together. “So . . .”  
  
“I like that,” Blaine interrupted, gesturing toward the divider.  
  
Kurt smiled weakly, the expression not quite reaching his eyes, as though he felt that Blaine was placating him. He reached up a hand to scratch at a spot behind his left ear, his nose crinkling slightly. “It was my mom’s,” he answered with a shrug, his voice filled with a feigned nonchalance, but his eyes flickering to the object in question uncertainly.  
  
Blaine smiled, opening his mouth to say something in return, but Kurt interrupted him.  
  
“Do you want something to drink?” Like he had come upon the realization that perhaps he was being an awful host and had to remedy the situation.  
  
“I—”  
  
“I don’t have any alcohol or anything,” Kurt muttered, toeing off his boots and brushing past Blaine to go to kitchen corner, his feet padding softly against the carpet and Blaine was again filled with an overwhelming sense of secondhand claustrophobia, the largeness of Kurt’s essence in the tiny shoebox of an apartment. “Because I . . . live here . . . and they know I’m not . . . twenty-one,” he muttered, resting a hand on the fridge and staring at it, his brow furrowed in concentration.  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow in amusement, taking a step forward and leaning against the wall near the kitchen table, letting himself fill with the impalpable creature that was Kurt, strong and beautiful and fumbling over the concept of letting himself trust as deep as he did.  
  
“I can get you something else, though, I have . . . nothing, umm,” Kurt muttered, pulling the fridge open and quickly shutting it. “I have nothing, I have . . . water,” he continued, the _a_ of the word long and drawn out as his gaze flew to the sink. “I have tap water . . . You want tap water or are your people above all that?”  
  
“My people?” Blaine murmured, resisting the urge to smirk as he watched the boy, his bones feeling liquidy and warm.  
  
“Fancy fucking trust fund sparkling water Perrier people— _oof_!” Kurt muttered, his gaze still so focused on the tap and the possibility of performing the job of a perfect host that he failed to pay any sort of attention to Blaine’s movements and ended up running smack into him. He inhaled at Blaine’s sudden proximity, stepping back until his back hit the fridge, glaring at the smirk that Blaine threw at him.  
  
“Kurt Hummel, you’re not _nervous_ , are you?” he teased.  
  
“Funny, that’s a good joke,” Kurt replied, his lips curling slightly as he tried to keep a straight face, though his eyes started sparkling playfully.  
  
“I am, aren’t I?” Blaine mused, licking his lips as he cast a thoughtful gaze toward the ceiling. “Funny and cute and charming and great in bed. Damn, you’re pretty lucky to have me.”  
  
“Very modest too,” Kurt snorted, his eyebrows raised up toward the graceful upsweep of his semi-styled hair.  
  
“Yes, that too,” Blaine grinned, resting a hand on the cool plastic of the fridge and tilting his head as he leaned in, hovering around Kurt, crowding him into the fridge but leaving a teasing amount of space between their bodies. He could feel Kurt’s heat, the shift of air as Kurt inhaled, his eyes darkening the way the sands of a shore would fall deeper under water as they stretched out to sea. Blaine stared at him, the mixture of colors like one of personalities, of emotions swimming on the waves. The heat, the want, the smallest bit of uncertainty.  
  
Blaine smiled and leaned it, feeling Kurt inhale in anticipation against him as he bumped his nose lightly against Kurt’s, lingering just that tiny bit away. “You’re nervous,” he murmured calmly. “Kurt.”  
  
Kurt’s eyes flickered open and he looked at Blaine, tilting his head to stare at him intently through his lashes. “I . . . told you . . .” he said finally, the words coming out slowly as though he feared that Blaine wouldn’t comprehend him exactly if he spoke at a normal pace. “I don’t . . . bring people back here. I don’t like . . . I told you about all that shit with my dad dying and jouvie and how . . . I don’t like not being in control. Sometimes I think that if I let it go, even a little bit, just let myself relax that I’ll just . . .” he sighed, his eyes fluttering shut as he inhaled and before Blaine could say anything, Kurt ducked out from under his arm and crossed the kitchen in two strides, leaning against the wall and looking out into the expanse of his apartment with a narrowed gaze. “I’m afraid of letting go.”  
  
Blaine watched him from where he was leaning against the counter. Watched the expression with which Kurt watched the various contents of the room, his brows crinkled uncharacteristically with worry and his eyes suddenly impeccably _sad_ , like his life was scattered before him in bits and pieces, with the most important parts missing. But there was something hauntingly noble in the open expression and it squeezed around Blaine’s heart like a blanketing embrace.  
  
He walked as slowly across the tiny room as possible, as though afraid to scare Kurt off, but the boy didn’t look at him, his eyes still trained around the room.  
  
He wound an arm around Kurt’s abdomen, stepping in close and feeling the way that the boy seemed to melt back against him. “I’m not asking you to, you know.”  
  
Kurt shook his head, and Blaine could just see his jaw clenching, could picture the strength of the determined fire blazing in his eyes before he turned around, leaning his back against the wall. “I want to,” he replied, looking at Blaine with an almost-sternness in his eyes, though his brows were still drawn together.  
  
Blaine shook his head, resisting the urge to laugh at the pointed expression. He tilted his head slightly to look at Kurt, his hand rising slightly. He brushed the backs of his fingertips against the smooth, clean-shaven skin of Kurt’s cheek, his thumb sliding against Kurt’s bottom lip as the contact dropped Kurt’s mouth open in a light inhale, his eyes darkening.  
  
He hissed in a breath of air as Kurt’s tongue darted out to lick his lips, sucking Blaine’s thumb into his mouth and he surged forward, pressing Kurt hard against the wall as his lips collided with Kurt’s.  
  
Kurt let out a groan, winding an arm around Blaine’s neck and pulling him closer, allowing him to deepen the attack, the hard, definitive thrust of their tongues against one another. Blaine swallowed the noise, allowing it to fill him, to pound his heart and fill his blood with a desperate rush, a tingle that reverberated throughout his entire body and he pressed forward, his hands roaming all over Kurt’s body, feeling and memorizing and craving. He tossed aside the need to explore and instead took, absorbed every smooth curve, every hard muscle, his hands quickly tugging Kurt’s shirt of his jeans, his hands carving imprints along the skin of Kurt’s lower back.  
  
His hands slipped into the back pockets of Kurt’s skin-tight jeans and he crowded him against the wall, twisting his tongue against Kurt’s as he thrust his hips forward, groaning at the electricity surging through his body. Kurt keened loudly against Blaine’s mouth, thrusting forward against Blaine, the growing hardness of his erection rutting into the leg that had been slotted between his own.  
  
Kurt mumbled a protest as Blaine pulled back, chest hot and straining from emotion and lack of air. He leaned back against the wall and Blaine took him in, lips already bruised and glistening with saliva, eyes ink-black, cheeks flushed, reflecting Blaine’s own want and drowning emotion.  
  
“Bed,” Blaine grunted, his voice coming out low and gruff and even as he inhaled at the commanding tone of the word, Kurt managed to raise a haughty eyebrow in Blaine’s direction.  
  
“Oh?” he started, the exhalation turning into a moan as Blaine surged forward into a brief, hard kiss before stepping away, his lips turned into a smirk.  
  
He didn’t say anything, simply turning on his heel and walking away from the wall partially separating the front door from the kitchen. He pursed his lips smugly when he didn’t hear Kurt following and reached for the hem of his shirt, pulling it swiftly over his head and tossing it back behind him, keeping his arms stretched over his head, his back muscles flexing in the motion.  
  
He’d barely made it two more steps when Kurt ran into his back, the cotton of his shirt soft as he wound his arms around Blaine’s middle and his teeth bit down on the exposed skin of Blaine’s shoulder. The force of his collision sent them stumbling several paces forward, nearly crashing into the makeshift coffee table. Blaine groaned at the scrape of Kurt’s teeth along his neck, the bruise that he knew would form there, but he pulled away, twisting in Kurt’s arms and pressing a hand to the center of Kurt’s chest, sending him flopping down onto the futon.  
  
Kurt let out an “oof” of breath and reclined back on his elbows, his eyes raking up and down Blaine’s body, his cock straining up against the tight confines of denim.  
  
“Shirt,” Blaine instructed, his chest heaving slightly, limbs quivering slightly with the effort not to simply collapse down onto Kurt. He could feel the heat of Kurt’s gaze, the slow simmer of blood in his veins but he stood, mimicking Kurt’s usual predatory gaze in his own amber eyes.  
  
Kurt cocked an eyebrow up, his tongue poking out of his mouth again slowly, sweeping in a tantalizing motion across his lips, preening in satisfaction as Blaine’s gaze was drawn to it. “Bossy, are we?” he murmured, eyes fixed on Blaine’s, but he sat up slightly, moving his weight of his elbows in order to sweep his own shirt over his head. He tossed it casually at Blaine’s face and settle back into a half reclined position after mussing up his hair further, his feet planted flat on the floor and his knees spread apart slightly. He grinned smugly as Blaine inhaled, his Adam’s apple bobbing hard as he swallowed, his gaze fixed on the rise and fall of Kurt’s chest, the flex of his abdomen as he breathed. The hand that was skimming carelessly along the inside of his thigh.  
  
“Are you just going to stand there or . . . ?” Kurt murmured, his eyes glittering in satisfaction and the expression started Blaine into movement.  
  
“Stomach,” he simply responded, looking pointedly at Kurt.  
  
Kurt blinked in surprise, looking slightly uncertain. “Can you not speak in full sentences anymore?”  
  
Blaine smirked, raising a hand to point direct at Kurt’s crotch. “Unzip your pants and lie on your stomach. I want to try something.”  
  
Kurt looked at him, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth before his hands moved to the button of his jeans, his hands working it loose even as he kept his eyes trained on Blaine. The sound of the zipper was jarring in the near-silent apartment, joining the clatter of the heater under the window and mixed sounds of their breaths.  
  
“Fuck,” Blaine murmured, his gaze dropping down to where Kurt’s cock, released from the tight confines of his jeans, strained against his boxer briefs, precome leaking out a small, damp spot on the cotton fabric. He glanced up to see Kurt’s self-confident smirk again and he rolled his eyes and took a step forward, batting at one of Kurt’s thighs with his hand. “Move, Hummel.”  
  
Kurt licked his lips again, his gaze flickering across Blaine’s face before he pulled his legs up and twisted onto his stomach, his upper body propped up slightly as he followed Blaine with his gaze, his torso twisting as Blaine settled down over him, knees straddling Kurt’s ass and leaned down, arms propping him up over Kurt as his lips began tracing a path from the high curve of Kurt’s cheekbone to the shell of his ear, tugging at the flesh between his teeth until Kurt groaned and his shoulders dropped, trying to allow Blaine better access.  
  
Blaine smirked, worrying the soft flesh as he dropped his hips down, grinding his erection against the firm swell of Kurt’s ass. Kurt groaned, the sound vibrating through his body and his head dropped down, his hips thrusting back for more of the contact. Blaine smirked and pulled away, his lips skimming over the smooth flesh of Kurt’s shoulder, tongue dipping between his shoulder blades, picking up beads of sweat as Kurt panted, pushing his hips against the futon. Blaine traced Kurt’s muscles with his tongue, riding over the ridges of his spine as he worked his way lower, sliding down Kurt’s body. His tongue dipped into the small of Kurt’s back, massaging the skin there lightly before he pulled back, his fingers dipping under the material of Kurt’s jeans.  
  
“Hips up,” he murmured softly, placing a kiss at the base of Kurt’s spine before sliding his jeans and briefs over his ass in one fluid motion, moving his own body into the space between Kurt’s legs and down toward the end of the bed as he pulled the material off and left it in a crumpled heap at the foot of the futon. Kurt twisted around at the sound of a zipper, his pupils blown a dark, midnight blue as he watched Blaine shack off his own clothes, his cock dark and straining toward his stomach.  
  
“Blaine,” he started but was cut off as Blaine leaned over him again, his lips pecking quickly against Kurt’s before slowing and kissing him in earnest, hands pressed into the futon. Kurt made a soft noise deep in his throat, his eyes fluttering open as Blaine pulled away and retraced his path down Kurt’s back, his lips pressing into a curved pattern, tongue bumping over Kurt’s spine. He swirled his tongue in the dimples of Kurt’s lower back before pressing his hands into the smooth flesh of Kurt’s ass, his eyes rising to Kurt’s as he pulled them apart, hands kneading the muscle as he observed the twisting line of Kurt’s body as he tried to turn to watch Blaine. Blaine could see him holding his breath, eyes wide in anticipation, though all that disappeared in a groan as Blaine ducked his head down, sweeping his tongue experimentally between Kurt’s parted cheeks.  
  
Kurt let out a guttural noise and his body seemed to uncoil, torso twisting around as his head fell forward with a gasp. Blaine inhaled at the reaction, shifting his body between Kurt’s legs and choking back a groan as his cock rutted against the futon, sending explosions through his body. He breathed out a slow breath, his hands flexing against Kurt’s ass. Kurt groaned loudly, his hips thrusting against the bed at the air that was blown against his hole, the reaction curling and twisting emotion at the pit of Blaine’s stomach. It filled him, aching in every muscle and without thinking further he dived back in, drawing a circling path around Kurt’s hole with the tip of his tongue.  
  
Kurt groaned again, his torso half raised, held up by shaking arms and at the slick feeling of Blaine’s tongue he could feel himself hardening further, body straining between the need to get off, to rut into the futon and the equally overwhelming instinct to thrust his ass back against Blaine’s face.  
  
Blaine chuckled as he sensed the motion, the noise deep and vibrating. He poked his tongue gently past the ring of muscle as he did so, the hum of his tongue choking a breathless, “ _Oh!_ ” out of Kurt and painting a flush across the back of his neck.  
  
He pressed his fingers hard into the skin of Kurt’s hips, holding him in place as he thrust his tongue in further, his entire face pressed against Kurt’s ass, enveloped in the tight heat of him as he twisted and swirled his tongue, humming every once in a while and causing Kurt to gasp soundlessly around the string of choked out moans that were escaping his lips.  
  
“Blaine,” he groaned, hips jolting into the futon and body quivering with the wet heat, the unexpected electricity, the sinfully _good_ feeling of insanity that was seeping into his core, the fullness that held in it the breathtaking promise. A promise that threatened to shoot explosions throughout Kurt’s body. “Blaine— _Jesus_ —wait . . .”  
  
Almost immediately Blaine pulled back, his absence leaving Kurt empty and suddenly wanting. “Is this okay? Sorry, I thought—”  
  
Kurt twisted around on his back, legs tangling around Blaine’s body before pulling Blaine back on top of him, kissing Blaine hard without even thinking about anything more than the sheer want of closeness. Blaine let out a surprised noise, wrists brushing against the skin of Kurt’s shoulders as he pressed them into the futon to keep his balance as he hovered, his tongue intertwining with Kurt’s as the boy kissed him heartily, pulling their bodies together for a moment before breaking away.  
  
“No, good, it’s good, I just, I want,” Kurt mumbled against Blaine lips, his eyelashes like feathers against Blaine’s cheek.  
  
“Yeah, right, okay,” Blaine replied quickly, his body thrilling and he pulled away far enough to look at Kurt, take him in fully. He could feel his heart attempting to break out of his chest. Kurt stared up at him, lips parted and shining almost as much as the darkness of his blown eyes. Blaine tried to find his voice, his throat working helplessly. He managed out a low, gruff, “Do you have . . .” before it failed him and he simply gestured through the air.  
  
Kurt licked his lips before nodding and sliding quickly out from under Blaine, kneeling down in front of the old trunk near the futon and pushing it open. Blaine could hear the shuffling of contents as Kurt briefly dug through it before slamming it shut, a box of condoms and a think packet of lube in his hands. He hesitated, staring at where Blaine had rolled onto his back in the middle of the futon.  
  
Blaine eyed the near-full box in amusement. “Enthusiastic, are you?” he teased, holding back a laugh when Kurt glared at him. “C’mere.”  
  
He touched Kurt’s wrist gently, fingers gliding over that familiar brand of swirling ink, as soon as Kurt got close enough, guiding Kurt until Kurt was straddling his hips. He eased the materials out of Kurt’s hands, placing them on the mattress as he pulled Kurt down into a kiss, slow and deep, his hands framing both sides of Kurt’s face. Kurt groaned into Blaine’s mouth, pressing him down into the futon, his tongue exploring Blaine’s mouth in earnest, like it was the first time.  
  
“I want you to ride me,” Blaine whispered against the corner of Kurt’s mouth, brushing his lips from the area to the smooth curve of Kurt’s jaw as Kurt let out a surprised noise. He pulled back quickly, staring at Blaine with wide eyes glittering in their arousal.  
  
“What?”  
  
Blaine smiled softly, leaning up and placing small kisses from the high curve of Kurt’s cheekbone to the corner of his lips. “You said you don’t like not being in control. So I want you to keep some of it.”  
  
Kurt swallowed, pulling back again with a furrowed brow, his eyes scanning Blaine’s face in earnest, finding nothing but gentle reassurances and sheer affection, like Blaine’s eyes were two empty classes that had been filled to the brim with it. “You . . .” he started, his voice rough, but he stopped and instead nodded quickly, mumbling out, “Yeah, yeah okay,” before reaching over to where their supplies had been discarded, hands fumbling slightly in his haste before Blaine reached up and joined their hands, squirting out liquid onto his own palm and letting the intertwining of their hands heat it up and spread it over his fingers.  
  
Blaine smiled as Kurt licked his lips, his eyes trained on the shining gel that coated Blaine’s fingers, his eyes connecting with Blaine’s only when Blaine withdrew his hand, sitting up ever so slightly as he reached behind Kurt, his hand brushing carefully between Kurt’s cheek, one finger grazing over his hole.  
  
Kurt’s breathing quickened and he let out a soft whine, pushing his ass back against Blaine’s finger, his eyes locked on Blaine’s. Blaine forced his breathing to be slow, forced himself to ignore the aching need in his own cock. He simply allowed himself to swim in the depth of Kurt’s eyes, waiting until he seemed to relax before pressing his fingertip past that first ring of muscle.  
  
He stilled his movements almost immediately after as Kurt’s eyes widened further and his gasps turned ragged. “Shh, just relax,” he murmured, taking his free hand and brushing it through Kurt’s bangs, shifting closer until he was sucking soft kisses into the curve of Kurt’s jaw, his finger twisting and rotating through the distraction until he felt Kurt loosening bit by bit around him. “I’ve got you.”  
  
He moved when Kurt nodded against his cheek, fingernails scratching slightly against Blaine’s skin where one hand was wrapped around his shoulder. He pushed in slowly to the first knuckle, the second, each time allowing Kurt to adjust around him, until he was pressed in as far as he could go.  
  
“You okay?”  
  
Kurt murmured something inaudible against his ear before nodding quickly, taking a deep breath. “Weird.”  
  
“Good weird?”  
  
“It’s not bad,” Kurt chuckled.  
  
Blaine smiled against the skin of Kurt’s cheek, taking that fact as an invitation to move. He dragged his finger out a couple of centimeters before pushing in, slowly and carefully adding more movement until he had almost pulled out completely and Kurt was instinctively pushing his hips backward, trying to recover lost sensation, the word, “More,” floating out between attempts at carefully controlled breaths.  
  
At the first intrusion of two fingers Kurt let out a small pained noise, his head falling down slight against Blaine’s as he tightened against the intrusion. Blaine knew the feeling, that first moment of an uncomfortable stretch and he continued to brush his free hand through Kurt’s hair, holding their faces closer together as he whispered encouragements into Kurt’s ear, rotating his two fingers gently near Kurt’s opening until he felt Kurt start to relax, the tension in his muscles leaking out. He continued to breathe heavily against Blaine’s ear, the mantra of relaxation running through his head, making no noise until Blaine crooked his fingers upward and found what he was searching for.  
  
Blaine grinned at the loud swear, the way Kurt’s body jerked like someone had set off fireworks inside his nerves, his face awash with the pleasure that had shot through every living cell in his body. He kissed the corner of Kurt’s lips where they were parted as Kurt sought breath, his eyes screwed shut as Blaine continued to rub the spot, fingers working in small little circles before he pulled out and, after a brief moment of hesitation, added one more finger.  
  
He could see it if he pulled away, feel it in the closeness of their bodies. The moment when the stretch stopped being uncomfortable and gave way to a steady flow of pleasure as Blaine pumped in and out, each movement purposefully rubbing over Kurt’s prostate. He could feel Kurt’s grip on his shoulder and was sure that there would be a bruise there, but the thought thrilled him and made him ache all the way through. A handprint, like a marker, binding and permanent.  
  
“Blaine,” Kurt murmured, groaning softly, clenching down around Blaine as Blaine continued to thrust his fingers in and out. “Blaine, I want—”  
  
“Shh, just let me prep you.”  
  
“I just . . . _fuck_ . . . I want more just give me more.”  
  
Blaine licked his lips, his tongue brushing against the skin of Kurt’s face where he was pressed against it before he nodded. Kurt whined in protest as Blaine slid his fingers out, falling back on his haunches as he watched Blaine reach for the box of condoms, quickly plucking one out and ripping off the wrapper. Eyes hooded and dark with anxiety and want, he kept his gaze trained on Blaine’s hands as they slipped the condom on and coated himself liberally with the remainder of the lube. Kurt swallowed, a hand wandering behind himself and gasping at the feel of his own fingers brushing over his stretched hole.  
  
Blaine watched him carefully, reaching a hand to Kurt’s hip to guide him forward until his cock brushed against Kurt’s ass. Kurt’s eyes flickered shut as he felt Blaine’s erection rub along his crack and he pressed both his hands against the skin of Blaine’s chest, leaning into the anchoring pressure of the hand on his hip.  
  
He swallowed at the soft encouragements that were murmured to him as Blaine’s free hand guided his cock to Kurt’s opening, the breath in them hitching slightly as he rubbed his head in small circles before pressing in.  
  
“Oh, my God,” Kurt groaned, head dropping forward with pleasure at the sudden stretch, the fullness of the feeling of having Blaine pressed inside him. His gaze was fixed on Blaine’s collar bone as he was guided backwards, eyes blinking and throat moving with each breath that got caught in it as he was lowered back onto Blaine’s cock.  
  
“Are you okay?” Blaine gasped out as he pressed fully into Kurt, the heat of his body and the tight clench around him churning the liquid of feeling in him with such intensity that he didn’t think that he could hold out much longer. He groaned as he stared at the milky smooth skin of Kurt’s body, long and lean as he stilled with Blaine fully buried inside him, eyes shut and head thrown back. Blaine raked his eyes along the length of Kurt’s body, the hand that had been guiding his cock into Kurt moving along the porcelain skin, fingers dipping into the curves of Kurt’s ribs and abs, memorizing every curve and ever stretch of muscle.  
  
After a moment Kurt nodded and leaned forward, his hands flexing slightly against Blaine’s chest. He lifted himself slightly, feeling Blaine’s heartbeat throbbing through him from the place where his hand was pressed over Blaine’s heart to the point where he was being filled up completely. The thought coursed through his veins, flowing like rapids and with a groan he dropped himself back down, crying out at the pressure, the fullness, the explosion of ecstasy as he filled himself up again.  
  
“Jesus, Kurt,” Blaine whispered, mesmerized by the way Kurt’s skin flushed under his fingers, the slow, tentative way he started his movements before quickly finding the need and want in the drag of his muscles along Blaine’s cock, the fireworks as Blaine’s cock hit his prostate and he started rocking down hard, twisting his hips in circles as he ground down, meeting each of Blaine’s desperate, uncontrollable thrusts upward.  
  
The sudden realization that this was a first, that he was the one being trusted shook Blaine to his core and even as Kurt rocked down, head thrown back with pleasure and nails leaving tiny, crescent moon implants in Blaine’s chest, Blaine surged upward, arms winding around Kurt’s waist to pull him further into his lap, lips pressing hard against Kurt’s.  
  
Kurt let out a startled noise at the unexpected change in position, but it quickly changed into a moan as Blaine was buried balls-deep within him, the head of his cock pressing hard against Kurt’s prostate, every miniscule movement driving sparks of electricity into the twisting coil of heat building at the base of Kurt’s spine.  
  
“Fuck . . . you’re perfect,” Blaine muttered into the skin stretched across Kurt’s collar bone. Kurt moaned softly, arms winding around Blaine’s neck, his cheek pressed into the curls atop Blaine’s head. Blaine’s hands fell down Kurt’s back as he sucked at Kurt’s sweat-beaded skin, pressing into the flesh of Kurt’s ass as he thrust upward, pulling out as much as he could before slamming up into Kurt, relishing the cry of pleasure that rang out from him, the way his arms tightened around Blaine’s neck. “Jesus, I just . . . everything, I . . .”  
  
Kurt gasped as Blaine rocked into him, raising Kurt up and slamming them back together as much and as hard as the angle would allow and he could feel himself coming undone, every nerve quivering, every muscle aching as the tension in his balls built, the fullness of his chest threatened to tear him apart. He keened as he felt one of Blaine’s hands wind around his cock, pumping him hard in rhythm with his thrusts, eyes flying open as a car passed on the street, the shadow cast by its headlights displaying one joined figure instead of two.  
  
“Blaine,” he moaned, the name coming out like a mantra, a prayer, murmured into the dark curls of the boy that was filling him up and tearing him apart at the seams and with each thrust, each twist of his fist, each unintelligible word muttered into the beads of sweat that rolled down his skin he was torn between the need for released and never-ending unity. “Blaine . . . I . . . _Blaine_ ” There were words. He had the words, hovering on the tip of his tongue and all it would take would be one short breath—  
  
“I want your everything,” Blaine groaned against him and with a twist of his wrist Kurt felt himself go, devoid of air, everything but the pure phenomenon of feeling that exploded through his body, crashing like the waves of the sea against rock on a stormy night. He came with a shout of Blaine’s name, face burying in the silk of Blaine’s curls as he fell, holding on for dear life. He could feel the tension of Blaine’s body, the pulse of him inside of Kurt as he came into the condom, body raking with shocks of lightning that had him digging his fingers in into every inch of Kurt’s skin that he could reach, holding him close as they rode their highs and fell from them.  
  
As the aftershocks rode away from them and their bodies turned boneless, Blaine fell backward onto the futon, pulling Kurt with him. Kurt groaned softly but didn’t move, his pliant limbs wrapped around Blaine as his breaths evened, his heartbeat steadying out but never quite losing its intensity.  
  
Blaine wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that, Kurt collapsed atop Blaine, Blaine buried inside of him.  
  
He placed soft kisses to Kurt’s forehead, brushing his bangs away as he gently shifted his hips, pulling himself out slowly. Kurt let out a noise of protest, moaning softly at the emptiness that remained without Blaine in him and, as Blaine carefully pulled the condom off and tossed it in the direction of a trash can, Kurt curled in close to him, body pressed along the length of Blaine’s side, arm wound around Blaine’s torso to keep him in place.  
  
“You okay?” Blaine murmured softly, running a hand between Kurt’s shoulder blades, smiling slightly at the exhaustion that replaced the ecstasy that had been wrenched out of Kurt’s every limb.  
  
Kurt hummed softly in acknowledgment, letting out a quiet little sigh. “Mmm, good, yeah, great.”  
  
Blaine chuckled, that newly familiar feeling of love and affection warming each point of contact between his body and Kurt’s. “So good reviews, huh?” he teased.  
  
Kurt let out a tiny snort of agreement, though it quickly turned quiet at the weight exhaustion and emotion trying to force his eyes closed. “You make me so happy,” he mumbled sleepily into the curve of Blaine’s neck, shifting his body as close as he could.  
  
Blaine exhaled softly, bringing a hand up to wrap around Kurt’s shoulders and threading his fingers through Kurt’s hair, moving them absentmindedly as the emotion coursing through him weighted his whole body down into the mattress. “I know the feeling.”

* * *

  
The red baseball cap on the nail outside swayed slightly in the breeze before being snatched up and plucked back onto a head of short-cut hair. The headlights of a station wagon illuminated the empty space that had once been occupied by it as its owner shuffled back to the car, hands jammed in his pockets and head bowed against the wind.  
  
“Hurry up, Dave!”  
  
He started at the shout of his name, riding over the blaring bass of the rap music that was blasting from the speakers of the car. He hadn’t even realized he had paused outside his car door, his gaze trained at the vehicle that was parked, dark and looking very permanent, in front of 5D. He stared between the door and the car and felt something stirring in him, an unpleasant feeling coursing through his veins, giving him the most incredible urge to punch a hole in the windshield of Mercedes.  
  
He probably could have if he tried.  
  
“Fucking fairies,” he heard from the driver’s side of the car, sound quiet but more audible as the music was turned down and Azimio leaned out the opening window, staring at Kurt Hummel’s door with disgust. “We could . . . _break up_ the party. Show them we ain’t tolerating any of their _shit_.”  
  
He could feel his lips twisting into a hateful expression and his hand twitched in his pocket the longer he stared at the damn car. He considered Azimio’s words but brushed them aside, knowing he would be too scared shitless of that Hummel kid to do anything about it.  
  
He shook his head, turning finally to pull open the door and slip inside, fiddling with his phone as he slammed the door shut. “Fucking hell, I don’t want to see any of that shit,” he muttered, thumbing over the screen. He could still see that damn car and it bothered him that it elicited such a reaction in him. “No, I’ve got a better idea.”

* * *

  
Blaine wasn’t sure if either of them had fallen asleep, the comfortable silence and the dual movements of their chests, slow and lazy and full stretching through the minutes. His hand had stilled in Kurt’s hair and he had felt the boy’s eyelashes fluttering against his shoulder until they came to rest, his eyes closed.  
  
He could feel himself on the verge of sleep, the soft, pleasant fogginess of it seeping under his skin and he could have imagined it, but he was positive he didn’t.  
  
“Blaine?”  
  
He didn’t open his eyes, could feel them weighted down by a lingering sleep.  
  
“Blaine? Are you awake?” Kurt murmured against his skin, so quiet that Blaine could barely hear him over the periodic clattering of the radiator under the window. Like he was trying not to wake Blaine. Like he wanted the answer to be a negative, stretching out on the silence around them.  
  
Kurt shifted slightly against him, his body stretching slowly and lazily, his face angled up until it was close to Blaine’s ear. Blaine could feel Kurt’s eyes, the hard gaze through the darkness in an attempt to see. That gaze fell when Kurt seemed to determine that Blaine was in fact asleep and he leaned his head down until it was nestled in the space linking Blaine’s neck and shoulders, his lips brushing against the bare, warm skin there.  
  
There was silence again, long and slow and full and Blaine almost thought Kurt had fallen asleep, thought he had maybe fallen asleep himself, had imagined it, when he felt Kurt draw a shuddering breath and hold it, long until it seemed like he had no choice but to let it go and when he did it came in a whisper of words stumbling over one another, smearing together into a quick, indiscernible _IthinkI’minlovewithyou_.  
  
Blaine was fairly certain he’d stopped breathing, the steadiness of his breaths hitching slightly at the skip in his pulse and Kurt seemed to freeze at the movement, his body stiffening as he waited. When Blaine didn’t move, his breathing returning and his pulse beating again as normal despite the rush of adrenaline throughout his whole body, Kurt relaxed, letting out a quiet laugh, like he was relieved the ceiling hadn’t collapsed in on him.  
  
“I think I’m in love with you,” he repeated, a little surer of himself, the words louder and murmured into the skin stretched over Blaine’s collar bone, emblazoned in his skin in case he woke up and thought that he’d dreamt them.  
  
Almost as soon as he’d said them, Blaine could feel Kurt’s mouth curving into a grin, his face turning to nuzzle further into Blaine’s neck, his eyelashes tickling his skin as he closed his eyes, his body pressing further into Blaine’s side as he chuckled. “How about that.”


	23. .:Scarves & Coffee.net:. Carry Me Home (Tonight) by blasthisass

He had a dream that he could fly. A dream in which the first thing that happened to him when he broke the surface and took his first gulp of air in a year was that he passed beyond it, his whole body floating through the air, elated. It was a feeling that was completely different from being weighted down by stones under water without air. It felt like life was seeping into the very core of him, old and familiar and wholly missed.  
  
His body ached, but it wasn’t bad. He couldn’t feel it in his shoulders, in the bruising of muscle, nerves remembering the flaring pain of collisions with lockers. It seeped into his bones like exhaustion, a sleep that he was waking up from.  
  
The dream he’d had was good. So real he almost wasn’t sure it was one. He could feel the brush of fingertips over his skin, each point of contact like the tracing of charcoal over canvas, making reality from a faded shadow. The warmth, little whispers of air that held no discernible meaning aside from the goosebumps that were raised on the surface of his skin, like Braille.  
  
It felt real and even as he felt sleep dripping away from him, Kurt forced his breathing to slow, his eyes to remain shut even in the stream of light that was falling on him through the window. Just in case it wasn’t and waking up would force it all to slip away.  
  
He let out a soft noise, his eyelids glowing with a deep gold as the sunlight illuminated his room. He could feel the cool of a wall against his back and he reached forward blindly with one arm, hand flopping gracelessly over the surface of the futon. When he found it, he pulled a pillow to his chest, burying his face in it to keep the light rays from blinding him as he tried to recover those little instances of dream before they slipped away, giving in to the twisting feeling of disappointment at the pit of his stomach, growing little by little from the moment his hand had patted around the empty bed. Dreams.  
  
A groan of frustration escaped him and he made to move, turn his body over to face the wall and put his back to the sun, but midway through the motion that heavy soreness in his limbs caught up to him. He let out a soft hiss of pain as he moved his lower body, his weight on his ass as he flipped over. With a quiet groan he fell onto his other side, his eyes flickering open to take in the dull white-grey of the wall next to him. That’s what it was, the ache of a once-full emptiness and it seemed to solidify reality for him, breaking him out of his own subconscious. He unwound an arm from around the pillow and let it drop down to his side. It stretched out, his fingers pressing gently into his mid thigh before moving upward, skimming over invisible handprints on bare skin. His breath grew irregular in anticipation and as his fingers pressed lightly between his cheeks his breath hitched and his body fell awash with memory, with fullness and warmth.  
  
He gazed at the calendar on the wall without truly seeing it. He focused briefly on the little square marked January 29, 2012, waiting to be filled, to join the little rows of red x’s. Those didn’t matter, not anymore. They were days passed. His eyes roved slowly to the cluster of boxes waiting to be filled, all ten of them, thinking. Considering every little plan—or lack thereof—he’d made for when they were all filled and every movement he drifted to that might derail them.  
  
He thought about Blaine. About the fact that it was, quite possibly, better for him to have been there and left than to have never been there at all.  
  
The simple reminder of his presence, his scent on the pillows, the gentle heat of him in the air, the whispered memories of his touch working to draw him up for air. Like the dream where he could fly.  
  
There was a noise and a loud swear from the kitchen and Kurt started, jolted into a sitting position and out of his thoughts. He inhaled sharply at the pressure on his lower body but ignored it in favor of twisting around, straining to look around the room divider toward the kitchen, his heart pounding. He looked to the door, an instinctual precaution, but it stood firm and solid as ever. It was the sight of the pair of black Converse sitting neatly next to his own boots that jolted his heart with emotion. He inhaled, slow and even, before casting his gaze about the parts of the room he could see, wondering if it was just the midmorning light that was making the walls glow a little bit whiter than they normally did.  
  
He found his underwear at the foot of the bed, tangled in his jeans and pulled it on as quickly as his movements would allow, the soreness of his limbs suddenly an exhilarating thrill. He stood, closing his eyes at the rapid change in elevation before opening them and training his gaze at the sunlight streaming in through the window. It sparkled with the dust in the air, and Kurt was caught back in his own thoughts, of fingerprints imprinted in one’s flesh and eyes like molten gold. He glanced toward the edge of the divider, just barely seeing the edge of his kitchen table and the chair that had been pulled away from it and he breathed, closing his eyes to inhale, in case he was thrown back underwater.  
  
He exhaled when he crossed toward the middle of the room and the man moving about the kitchen came into full view. All Kurt could do was watch, his pulse pounding out a steady rhythm that rushed through his ears. He took a couple of steps forward, bare feet quiet on the carpeted floor and he leaned against the wall, in the same spot where the heat of his own body, enveloped by Blaine’s, was softly fading.  
  
He watched Blaine’s form as he moved in the small space, the muscles of his back flexing with every motion, the grey of the t-shirt stretched across his shoulders and on any other day there would be something shutting down inside of Kurt at the sight of it, but not that day. He could picture the little row of black mustaches lining the front of it, straight down the chest and it would have collapsed something but right then all he could focus on was the snug manner in which the cotton of the fabric clung to Blaine’s shoulder blades, not necessarily like it was meant to fit properly, but like it was trying to accommodate, to cling and mold to his skin until it looked like it belonged.  
  
Little by little, it was like Kurt’s senses awakened as he watched Blaine navigating the kitchen, focused on his task. He became aware of the soft melody that Blaine was humming, one that Kurt didn’t recognize but that he automatically liked. He became aware of the sizzle and mouth-watering scent of breakfast being cooked and the lump in his throat was thick when he tried to swallow it down.  
  
There was a warm feeling swirling in his stomach and as he watched Blaine he considered words, words and emotions spoken in the quiet darkness in case, upon leaving him, they turned out not to be true. In case they derailed everything.  
  
 _I think I’m in love with you_  
  
Kurt inhaled but the action didn’t relieve the squeeze of pressure in his chest. Because it could be bad, so, so bad. And his first instinct was to run from it, but his feet were planted firmly on the ground, his back solid against the wall and he stayed firm.  
  
He wondered if it would be so very drastic if those last ten squares on his calendar stayed blank. If he stopped counting down the minutes and instead reveled in them.  
  
“You’re making breakfast,” he said finally, leaning against the wall because he couldn’t quite process it all, the warmth and the sadness and the soft simmer of happiness.  
  
Blaine started and spun around gracefully on one foot, frying pan in one hand and a beaming smile that almost burned brighter than the sunlight streaming in through the window. “You’re up!”  
  
“You’re making breakfast,” Kurt repeated, feeling a little dazed by the prospect.  
  
“I knew I was wrong about you being a morning person,” Blaine smirked, putting the frying pan down and mixing the scrambled eggs around on it. “Thought you would be, after all your sneaking out of people’s houses before they awoke but it’s almost noon.” He sounded slightly triumphant, his voice light and teasing as he glanced over his shoulder, crinkling his nose at Kurt.  
  
“I—”  
  
“Though I have to say, you’ve totally gone and ruined my whole romantic plan of wooing you with breakfast in bed.”  
  
“You’re making me breakfast?” Kurt muttered, his gaze fixed on the rapid flip of egg and ingredients in the pan. The feeling in his chest felt like it was seeping into his circulation.  
  
Blaine chuckled. “More like brunch now, I suppose.”  
  
“But I . . . you’re making eggs.”  
  
Blaine’s brow furrowed and he turned his back on the stove, eyeing Kurt with a peculiar mixture of curiosity and amusement dancing across his face. “Yeah, I’m not that big a fan of pancakes and waffles and shit. Capital offense, according to my brother. Are you okay?”  
  
Kurt didn’t answer for a brief moment. He licked his lips. “I don’t . . . I don’t have any food. I have . . . stale bread and pickles. You can’t make eggs from stale bread and pickles.”  
  
Blaine snorted, turning down the flame under what he was making before sauntering over toward Kurt, his eyes twinkling happily. “Oh, can’t I?”  
  
Kurt let out a short breath of laughter, his gaze moving to Blaine’s face as he was approached. He could feel the tingle of air between them, the simmering heat of Blaine’s presence in his very blood and he leaned his head back against the wall, feeling it all slip away in favor of the quiet peace of feeling.  
  
Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.  
  
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Blaine murmured, running a hand along the skin of Kurt’s bare arm. “I didn’t take the whole ‘I’m going to fuck your brains out’ thing too literally, did I?” he teased, his eyes swimming with a tender amusement.  
  
Kurt’s eyes narrowed before he shrugged nonchalantly, pressing the weight of his body against the wall behind him and gazing down at Blaine. “You flatter yourself if you think you fucked me nearly hard enough,” he replied casually, though his breath threatened to stutter as Blaine’s eyes darkened.  
“Is that so? So if your little dazed look isn’t from sex with me, what’s it from?”  
  
He was still teasing, still so easy and casual and it always shocked Kurt. How quickly Blaine had grown comfortable and easy in his own skin. In them and something about the joke turned Kurt serious; turned him honest.  
  
“No one’s ever made me breakfast here,” he murmured softly and Blaine’s thick eyebrows rose in unison, something flashing quickly through his eyes like a bolt of lightning. Kurt felt that urge rise up in him, could feel barriers closing in around him and he was about to snap at Blaine, tell him not to fucking _dare_ pity him when the words were stolen away from him, swallowed in the firm press of Blaine’s body against his, his lips against Kurt’s.  
  
Kurt could feel a groan swelling up inside him as he was overwhelmed, surrounded by the hard press of Blaine’s lips, the thick heat of him, the heady scent and it was all Kurt could do to kiss him back, to claim back what he wanted, what he needed, the idea that he could lose it tucked away in the back of his mind.  
  
He whined as Blaine pulled back, drawn forward toward him like the opposite poles of a magnet. He heard Blaine chuckle as his eyes opened only to close as Blaine leaned forward again, lips moving against Kurt’s as he murmured, “Then you should do me the courtesy of eating it and pretending that it’s good,” before pulling away, hazel eyes glittering like crystals, the expression warmer and more open than Kurt had ever seen it. It was a striking thought, like he hadn’t realized he wasn’t the only one with walls until they were gone.  
  
He looked down to where Blaine’s hand had slid, fingers brushing over the light hair on Kurt’s arm before slipping in between his own and tugging him forward toward the kitchen table. Kurt couldn’t help but smile as he allowed himself to be pulled away from the wall. He rolled his eyes as Blaine pulled out a chair with a dramatic gesture and fell into it before he could stop himself, wincing slightly in pain as his ass collided with the curved wood of the seat. Blaine had moved away to tend to the eggs but he reappeared almost immediately, concern shining in his eyes before Kurt waved him away with reassurances that he was fine and starving and to give him some fucking food already. He tried to remember when Blaine had stopped being offended by the random things that came out of his mouth sometimes as he watched him roll his eyes in response and start pushing eggs from the pan onto their plates. Kurt watched it, watched the yellow of egg meld with the soft pink of ham and the deep, bold red of tomato.  
  
He looked up at Blaine and saw Blaine smiling back at him as he took a bite, letting the taste dissolve in his mouth. The thought of how he could do this forever seeped into his bones like the warmth of the sun.  
  
“I could get used to this,” he murmured quietly, more to himself than to Blaine, but his nerves tingled when he saw the crinkle of Blaine’s eyes and the curve of his lips around the rim of his coffee cup.  
  
There were ten unmarked days on his little homemade calendar, but if he bought a real one there could be more.  
  
Kurt started at the sound of a curt knock on the door. He wrenched his gaze away from Blaine, the warmth swimming in his veins dropping slightly to room temperature as he stared at the wooden rectangle.  
  
Next to him, Blaine frowned at the door before glancing curiously at Kurt, eyes scanning the way his eyes had narrowed and his fingers stiffened around the metal of his fork. “You expecting anyone?”  
  
Kurt didn’t answer, too busy lost in the quick, rapid thoughts running through his brain, trying to figure out who was at the door without moving to open it. It wasn’t _them_ , the knock was far more official than the banging and jeering that would have ensued.  
  
“I’ll go get it, then,” Blaine started when the knock sounded again, pushing his chair away from the table.  
  
Kurt blinked as Blaine stood and he shook his head, following suit quickly to cut Blaine off. “I’ll do it.”  
  
Blaine caught him by the wrist, pulling him back to place a soft kiss on his lips before muttering, “I’ll get the door. You should put on pants or a shirt or something.” Time froze in the moment when Blaine’s eyes roamed across Kurt’s bare chest appreciatively, but it was gone as soon as it came as Blaine moved past him toward the door, pulling a black sweatshirt from the hook on which their coats were hanging and tossing it at Kurt. He watched Kurt for a split second, waiting for him to pull the clothing on and zip it halfway up his chest before he pulled open the door.  
  
Kurt stiffened defensively at the sight of the uniformed man outside, but Blaine remained firmly situated in the space between the edge of the door and its frame, his hand stretched up the side of the door as he leaned on it. “Can we help you, officer?”  
  
The man at the door looked at Blaine in slight surprise, taking him in before glancing over his shoulder at Kurt, his lips curling unpleasantly. Kurt scowled back at him, right hand moving across his own body to find the dark ink on his left, thumb pressing hard into the tattooed flesh, his the skin of his tight by the clench of his fist. Kurt knew him, could remember from that day, out behind the bleachers, Coach Sylvester’s hand around his arms in a death grip, knew his nametag read ‘Travers’ and knew that the feeling of pure dislike was entirely mutual.  
  
“Got a call about a disturbance last night,” was the gruff reply and Kurt could see Blaine gearing up to answer but his own anger flared up first.  
  
“You’re fucking kidding me,” he growled, taking two steps to Blaine’s side just as Blaine was saying, “What kind of disturbance, sir?” with almost more inbred politeness than Kurt could really stand at the moment.  
  
Travers watched Kurt and Kurt could see the distaste in his eyes, the way his hand lingered over the instruments at his belt as though he were waiting for something. He started to say something but Blaine pressed his other hand to the door frame, blocking Kurt from moving forward and the action made him pause, undoing each fatal push of Kurt’s buttons that had been made. He chose instead to glare at the police officer, waiting for him to speak.  
  
Travers looked slightly displeased at the lack of action before answering, “Several calls came in about disturbances of a . . .” he paused to sneer at them, his gaze dragging disdainfully across Kurt’s bare chest where it was exposed beneath the thin hoodie, “Sexual nature.” He waited for a brief moment as Kurt’s jaw clenched. “Not the first time we’ve gotten such calls. Several of the neighbors have put in calls at one point or another. I’m sure you understand it’s . . . hmm, part of my job to keep the peace in the neighborhood.”  
  
He spoke like it was a warning but his hand lingered near the tools of his trade, clipped to his belt and his eyes gleamed, like a final victory, like he was tired of biding his time and it flashed up an angry fire in Kurt’s veins, filling him with the uncontrollable need to lash out and he tried to reel in control too late, his entire body surging forward against the stiffness of Blaine’s arm, attempting to block his way.  
  
“You’re fucking _kidding_ me,” he snarled again, the venom in his voice poisonous even to himself, fueling his blood, filling his sinews and it was irrational, such a small trigger, but it threw him so easily, the barrier dissolving in the haze of Blaine and sex and domesticity and _Blaine_. “Oh, you’re fucking _precious_ , how long have you been waiting for this?”  
  
He took a step forward, Blaine’s grip tightening on the wood of the door frame to keep him from passing, the whisper of his name, calm and quiet and yet still laced with something doing nothing to calm him.  
  
“Kurt—”  
  
“But the fact that you’ve come here with your little bullshit stories. Your fucking hypocrisy and bigotry is so fucking _laughable_ ,” Kurt sneered. He watched Travers’ hand lingering near that small little pouch near his belt and he could feel himself spiraling, could see what would happen, but he couldn’t stop because he was just tired, too damn tired of it all. “Because who gives a shit if no one can function because the asshole two doors down spends all day yelling at his wife and all night fucking her raw.”  
  
He watched Travers’ eyes harden, could feel Blaine twitching slightly beside him, like he wanted to move and do something but remained still. Kurt wondered if Blaine could feel his heartbeat where his arm was pressed against Kurt’s chest. Whether it pulsed through him stronger than his own.  
  
“Or the fucking Neanderthals wandering around here waiting to jump anyone that so much as _looks_ at them. Or the fact that this building could fucking topple _over_ if there was a gust of wind strong enough. Or the fact that the people living upstairs can’t get their kid to ever just shut the fuck up. No, who cares about all that disruption to this happy little living environment,” Kurt laughed, harsh and sharp and piercing through the air. “No, the _obvious_ priority is to stop the fucking little fag in 5D from getting fucked up the ass!”  
  
He braced himself as Travers started forward, eyes flashing, but he was suddenly blocked from Kurt’s view by the very solid frame of Blaine’s body, twisting around and pressing him backward into the room, away from the door and the officer with a gleam of malicious disappointment in his eyes, hand still lingering near the cuffs still clipped to his belt.  
  
“Kurt, calm down,” Blaine murmured, crowding him backward. His eyes were shining with something that Kurt didn’t think he could read and as the adrenaline, the exhaustion, the anger still seared through him, he tried to duck around Blaine, only to find his upper arms grabbed tightly to hold him in place.  
  
“Let go of me,” Kurt growled, trying to wrench his shoulders away but Blaine held on and it sent a strange sort of thrill through Kurt, underneath it all. His strength.  
  
“Come back,” Blaine murmured softly, his eyes large and bright, shining with a shimmering fire.  
  
He tried to pull his shoulders out of Blaine’s grasp again, but it was gone suddenly, almost sending Kurt off balance and before he could take advantage of the sudden freedom of his own limbs he felt the warm envelopment of Blaine’s hands framing his face, the soft flesh of his palms caressing his cheeks, the calloused pads of his fingertips splayed out from his temple down the curve of his jaw. He was so surprised by the motion that he forgot his frustration, how easy it would be to wrench himself away and lose control. Instead, he found his breath hitching, catching on his throat as Blaine leaned forward, pressing him back slightly into the room, unstyled curls falling over his forehead, tickling Kurt’s skin.  
  
“Come back, Kurt,” Blaine whispered and Kurt wanted to wrench himself away, to snarl that he hasn’t fucking gone anywhere but he could see patches of clear sky between the fog, as though Blaine’s breath were dispersing it like wind. And suddenly his muscles seemed complacent, head and adrenaline falling under the soothing blanket of Blaine’s closeness. “Come back to me.”  
He exhaled, a soft, breathy laugh of disbelief at the press Blaine’s forehead. He was suddenly like an anchor, an impossible anchor grounding Kurt and in the press of his forehead, the gentle pressure of his hands against Kurt’s cheeks, as Kurt breathed.  
  
“Blaine.”  
  
“Shh, it’s okay, just stay calm.”  
  
He smiled slightly, his eyes closed, the tip of Blaine’s nose brushing gently, so gently against his. He suddenly got a picture in his head, so bright and clear that he laughed, forgetting his tiredness and his anger and just letting Blaine invade his senses. “So, is the reference to _Atonement_ purposeful or pure coincidence?”  
  
Kurt could feel the slight crinkle of confusion in Blaine’s forehead, could almost feel his memory working to make sense of the comment. Could feel the instant when he understood the reference and smiled, breathing in deeply, like he was trying to permanently invade his sense with Kurt’s presence. “Coincidence.”  
  
“Good, because I’m not sure how satisfied I am with being James McAvoy,” Kurt muttered, feeling the edges of his lips curling up and he couldn’t help but wonder why it was suddenly so easy. Whether it could stay easy.  
  
“Are you saying that you’d rather be Cecilia than Robbie?” Blaine replied softly in response, sounding surprised, but the tension that Kurt hadn’t realized was in his voice had faded. There was relief in it now, peppered with a heavy affection.  
  
“I’m saying that I’d rather fuck James McAvoy than fuck Kiera Knightley, that’s all,” Kurt responded, snorting slightly with barely surprised laughter. He couldn’t remember why he’d been so angry moments ago.  
  
“Well, that’s a sentiment I can get behind,” Blaine chuckled. His thumb moved over Kurt’s cheekbone as they stood, oblivious to anything outside of themselves until Blaine pulled back, laughter rippling through him with such a sudden intensity that his head dropped forward toward his chest, his shoulders shaking with it.  
  
“What?”  
  
“If we’re Cecilia and Robbie, does that make Officer Krupke over there Briony?” Blaine laughed, forcing his head up so that he could look at Kurt in amusement and Kurt started in surprise, glancing over Blaine’s shoulder to where Travers was standing in the doorway, an unreadable expression on his face as he watched them. Instead of the rage seeping back into his bones, however, Kurt was struck by the contrasting image of the bulky police officer and the nimble, wispy character of Briony and he burst out laughing, turning back toward Blaine with a hand flying up to his mouth to stifle his merriment. He could see the wide expanse of his own blue eyes reflected in Blaine’s as they stared at each other, trying to keep from laughing too loud, lost in their moment but not alone.  
  
One of Blaine’s hands fell to Kurt’s shoulder, massaging the muscle there. The thumb of the hand that remained pressed to Kurt’s cheek continued its soothing motion over Kurt’s cheekbone. “Are you okay?” he asked again, leaning in close, until Kurt almost couldn’t focus his gaze properly.  
“I just . . .” he sighed, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. “I’m just tired of it. It’s just really fucking unfair.”  
  
“I know. Believe me, I know,” Blaine reassured, his breath warm and comforting against Kurt’s lips. “But look at him, Kurt. You can see him just itching for an excuse to arrest you. Don’t give him that. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”  
  
“He’s lying, you know. About the multiple complaints. I haven’t . . . I told you, I’ve never—”  
  
“I know.” Reassurance in a tiny breath of air.  
  
Kurt nodded, breathing a little easier. “Thank you.”  
  
Blaine exhale a short laugh through his nose, murmuring, “For what?” at the same time that the sound of a throat being purposefully cleared sounded behind them.  
  
Kurt blinked at the sound, his eyes scanning Blaine’s face quietly, taking him in. The warm embers smoldering in the golds and greens of his eyes, the curls falling over his forehead, mussed from sleep and the shower he must have taken that morning, the glow of his tan skin in the sunlight streaming through the window.  
  
Blaine smiled reassuringly at him, moving his face forward to brush his nose against Kurt’s again before murmuring, “Don’t let him get to you.”  
  
Kurt took a deep breath, feeling the grinding clench of bone as he steeled his jaw, his eyes narrowing slightly as he forced himself to stay calm before nodding and stepping out from behind Blaine and crossing the room in three swift steps. Travers started, his hand jumping back to his belt from where it’d relaxed slightly during his observation of the startlingly intimate moment. Kurt rolled his eyes at the action, instead leaning casually against the doorway and allowing his lips to curl up into an easy smirk. “Sorry about that, officer, we’ll be quieter next time.”  
  
Travers’ eyebrows shot up so fast in his surprise that Kurt felt the urge to laugh. He watched the officer stare in disbelief between Kurt and Blaine as Blaine approached the door again, the weight of his hand falling on the curve of Kurt’s lower back, his thumb working the fabric of his sweatshirt comfortingly.  
  
When he received no response, Kurt simply looked smug, letting the pressure of Blaine’s hand keep him grounded as he continued. “So I’m assuming that the quiet hour for these apartments is around ten, right?” Travers’ eyes narrowed at the transformation in Kurt’s demeanor and he nodded stiffly.  
“Okay, awesome, so I’ll just fuck Blaine here before ten, get all the noise out of the way and then later in the night we’ll switch. Should take care of the noise problem.”  
  
Blaine chuckled softly, leaning in toward Kurt and muttering, “You forget that you were the one getting fucked last night,” just loud enough for the officer in their doorway to hear and blanch slightly.  
  
Kurt rolled his eyes. “Then we’ll do it the other way around, whatever. Either way, should solve the problem,” he simpered smugly, feeling immense satisfaction from the look on Travers’ face.  
  
“I—”  
  
“So if that’s all, sir, I think we’ll be getting on with our breakfasts. I’m kind of exhausted from last night and I should really refuel before the day.”  
  
Kurt watched the officer’s face flash through every shade imaginable, his mouth working as though he were trying to think of something to say, of some charge that would give him an excuse not to leave the apartment complex without Kurt’s wrists in handcuffs, but in light of Kurt’s smug calmness he couldn’t think of anything to say. Couldn’t think of anything to do and as the realization came to him the hatred for the evasion, for the two boys standing before him burned in his gaze.  
  
“That’s all,” he snarled angrily, gazing at Blaine as though he’d caused him some unimaginable harm before turning on his heel and stalking back to the police car parked next to Blaine’s. Kurt smirked at his partner watching from the passenger seat with a furrowed brow before Blaine eased the door closed carefully, breathing out an exhale of relief.  
  
“Is life around here always this exciting?” he chuckled, glancing at Kurt.  
  
“Oh, _yeah_ ,” Kurt drawled sarcastically in response. “The weekly witch burnings are particularly good fun. The biweekly Mexican chicken fights aren’t half bad either.”  
  
“And you’ve never invited me, shame on you,” Blaine tutted, leaning against the door, his shoulder brushing against Kurt. He moved forward until his lips were hovering over Kurt’s. “I love me a good witch-burning.”  
  
“I’ll remember that,” Kurt responded seriously before closing the distance, his lips slotting perfectly together in the kiss. He pulled away after a brief moment, leaning his head against the wall near the door.  
  
Blaine smiled at him, his fingers curling around Kurt’s wrist, thumb brushing over the tattoo there. “So, where were we? You were thanking me for something?”  
  
“Hmm, yes . . .” _For this, all this_. “For breakfast, I believe,” he teased, ducking away from Blaine to saunter over to the kitchen. “Though if it sucks I might have to kick you out and find someone who can cook me decent breakfasts.”  
  
Blaine snorted. “Please, you can’t get rid of me so easily now that I know about the chicken fights and the witch burnings.”  
  
“Damn.”

* * *

  
_01.30.12 (08:31am)_  
 **From Kurt** : They’re all ignoring me.  
 **From Kurt** : Like this weekend didn’t happen.  
 **To Kurt** : Who?  
 **From Kurt** : The Nude Erections.  
 **To Kurt** : Isn’t that a good thing?  
 **From Kurt** : It feels like a trap.  
 **To Kurt** : Stop being such a drama queen.  
 **From Kurt** : You’ve met them you should understand my suspicion.  
 **To Kurt** : You should barge into glee club practice and sing them an angry song about your feelings.  
 **From Kurt** : Blaine.  
 **To Kurt** : How about Hot and Cold by Katy Perry?  
 **From Kurt** : You’re not taking me seriously.  
 **To Kurt** : You’re being ridiculous.  
  
 _02.02.12 (10:54pm)_  
 **To Kurt** : You busy tomorrow night?  
 **From Kurt** : Nope.  
 **From Kurt** : What do you have in mind?  
 **To Kurt** : I have a couple of exams, so I can’t drive to Lima. But you can come hang out here.  
 **From Kurt** : Can’t. Bike’s still busted, no way to get there.  
 **To Kurt** : Oh.  
 **From Kurt** : Sorry.  
 **To Kurt** : That’s okay. Let me know when it’s fixed.  
 **To Kurt** : I can come over when I’m done catching up on stuff.  
  
 _02.05.12 (01:16pm)_  
 **From Kurt** : I hate you.  
 **To Kurt** : What? Why?  
 **From Kurt** : I miss you.  
 **From Kurt** : I haven’t seen you for a week and I miss you.  
 **From Kurt** : You’ve turned me into the fucking clingy boyfriend.  
 **From Kurt** : You suck.  
 **To Kurt** : I miss you too.  
 **From Kurt** : Good.  
  
 _02.09.12 (03:02pm)_  
 **To Kurt** : I’m free!  
 **To Kurt** : Want me to come over tomorrow?  
  
 _02.10.12 (12.45am)_  
 **To Kurt** : You’re not still sulking about the clingy boyfriend thing, are you?  
  
 _02.10.12 (12:58am)_  
 **To Kurt** : Because we haven’t talked in a week. I think you’re officially free of the title.  
 **To Kurt** : Just text me when you get this?  
  
 _02.13.12 (04:30pm)  
Incoming Call_  
  
“Hello?”  
  
“You free for lunch? We’re getting lunch.”  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow at the voice on the other end, surprising a chuckle as he dropped his books into his messenger bag. “Well, hello there, brother of mine. It’s so pleasant to hear from you. I’m doing _swimmingly_ , how about your lovely self?”  
  
He smirked when he could practically hear Cooper rolling his eyes on the other end, even amidst the bustle of the crowd that he appeared to be moving through. “Shut up, the greeting was implied.”  
  
Blaine hooked the strap of the bag over his shoulder, squinting slightly as he emerged into the early afternoon sunshine. “You’re in a good mood.”  
  
Cooper groaned, swearing at someone that apparently walked into him. “Seriously, Blaine, can you get lunch? I need to vent to someone sane before I go on a crazy murder spree.”  
  
Blaine winced sympathetically, casting two glances down the street before jogging across it to the nearby Panera and stepping inside quickly, the warmth of the building a stark contrast to the chill outside. “This about your job?”  
  
“I’m going to strangle my boss and all the stupid little punks in that station.”  
  
Blaine sighed, dropping his bag onto a table near the window and making his way toward the cashier to order a coffee. “Okay, I’m in the Panera on High Street.”  
  
“I’m leaving the gym, I’ll be there soon,” Cooper muttered distractedly, though his voice held something grateful in it before he hung up quickly.  
  
Blaine sighed and accepted his coffee gratefully before making his way back to his seat, dropping down into it before running a hand through his hair, not particularly caring that he was dislodging the mild amounts of gel that were keeping his hair under control. He took out his phone and frowned at it, flipping through his recent messages before setting it down irritably. It had been almost a week since he’d heard from Kurt and he didn’t know what to make of it. Didn’t know how to feel about the string of messages that Kurt had last left him or the reason behind the fact that he hadn’t been texted since.  
  
He loved Cooper and would have normally been more than willing to listen to him rant about his work problems, but he suddenly felt like he had too many ideas, too many thoughts flying through his head and adding his brothers issues with his boss to the pile didn’t seem like a good idea.  
  
He wasn’t worried that Kurt’s teasing worry about becoming the clingy boyfriend was the reason for his silence. He could still hear the breathed murmur of, “I think I’m in love with you,” echoing through his mind as he lay in bed. He’d never felt so incredibly confident in a relationship.  
  
But, then again, that begged the question of what was keeping Kurt silent.  
Blaine exhaled resignedly before pulling his phone out again. He frowned at it and typed out a quick _Hey, haven’t heard from you in a while, you free this weekend?_ to send to Kurt before placing the phone near the end of the table in case Cooper called or Kurt responded.  
  
Feeling he might as well pass the time before Cooper got there, he pulled out the novel he was reading for his romanticism class and a pencil, sliding down slightly in his seat until he was in a comfortable position. He’d barely read half a page before a voice to his right wrenched him out of the fictional world.  
  
“Hey.”  
  
Blaine jumped, the familiarity of the voice striking through him like a bolt of lightning and in his surprise his pencil went clattering to the floor. By the time he looked up, the owner of the voice had fallen into a crouch, long hair falling into his eyes and fingers winding around pencil and picking it up.  
  
Blaine held his breath as it was offered back to him, held loosely between tan fingers, stained slightly with ink from vigorous note-taking.  
  
“You dropped your pencil.”  
  
Blaine exhaled, but couldn’t think of anything else to say except, “Matt.”  
  
Matt smiled quietly up at him, pencil still extended toward Blaine, his eyes crinkling slightly.  
  
“Hey, Blaine.”


	24. Chapter 24

“Do you mind if I sit?”  
  
Blaine started, blinking the sun streaming through the window out of his eyes and letting his gaze focus on Matt, whose warm grin had wavered when Blaine had seemingly frozen in surprise, eyes wide and staring up at him. He shook his head, not to say _no_ but to try to clear it, his hand holding his cell phone hard.  
  
Matt licked his lips when the silence stretched between them, his grey eyes shining anxiously and after a moment he looked down at his shoes, opening his mouth to say something when Blaine said quickly, “I’m meeting Cooper.”  
  
He wasn’t quite sure if that was a, “No,” or an apology for something that he had done or hadn’t done but Matt smiled at him suddenly, his hand hovering near the backrest of the chair opposite Blaine. “No, I understand, I have plans later,” he reassured quickly, running a hand through his hair.  
  
“Matt—”  
  
“I’ll be out of your hair the minute your brother shows up,” Matt reassured and when Blaine looked up at him, his friendly smile was strained and the strange little twist of a plea in his voice obvious. Blaine swallowed and exhaled, feeling his shoulders deflate and the muscles of his back molding to the contour of the chair supporting him.  
  
He nodded and waved his hand at the chair in front of him. He tried to ignore the twinge of feeling when Matt’s face lit up and he dropped instantly down into it, placing the paper bag filled with his food on the ground next to his backpack. He looked momentarily torn between leaning forward with his elbows resting on the table and leaning back in his seat to put some distance between them.  
  
Sitting across from him, Blaine swallowed as he got his first proper glimpse at Matt and he wondered what it meant about him when the first thought to cross his mind was that Matt needed a haircut. It wasn’t a desperate need, like he’d been missing in the woods for months. It was just a little long, dark strands of it falling over his forehead and casting dark shadows over his eyes. His fingers were intertwined, hands resting on the table, fingers of his right hand covered with small little dashes of black ink from where his pen had accidentally skidded in his hurry to write, face bent low over his paper because he was nearsighted and even with contacts he had the habit of leaning in closer than necessary to his paper. He looked tired and Blaine wondered how much of it was his fault.  
  
“You’re staring.”  
  
Blaine started again, eyes darting up to meet Matt’s and he was surprised to find the brief periods of anxiety that had surrounded him disappearing and his face housed an slight smile again, the natural brightness in his eyes startlingly heart-wrenching because it reminded Blaine of how long it had been since he’d seen it. Not only since they broke up, but even before, when things had started to drift, carried in separate directions by the currents of time.  
  
“Sorry,” he mumbled, his nose crinkling as he looked swiftly out the window, his hand twisting around the warm ceramic of his coffee cup. Matt pursed his lips softly and Blaine could see his reflection observing him in the window. He opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted by Matt, who raised a hand to stop him.  
  
“If you’re going to make a comment about the weather, you can stop right there,” he joked cheerfully before growing a little more serious. “This doesn’t have to be awkward, Blaine.”  
  
Blaine couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Seriously, Matt? Need I bring up the last time we saw each other?”  
  
Matt crinkled his nose. “I mean, you can. If you want to make things awkward,” he teased and Blaine couldn’t help but stare, trying to figure out where all this easiness, the playful banter and the joking was coming from, especially when the image of his hand holding hard to that silver picture frame or twisting in the fabric of Kurt’s shirt as he slammed him into a wall played across his brain.  
  
Matt’s brow was furrowed slightly, as though he could see what Blaine was picturing and something about the little worried look made Blaine guilty again and he cleared his throat awkwardly. “What are your plans? Later?”  
  
Matt smiled suddenly and Blaine could almost see the shreds of memory disappearing. He couldn’t help wondering how he did that, how he could sit and smile like he had when he and Blaine had first met. “I’m meeting Cas. She’s convinced that there’s this guy that’s started haunting Hampton’s that needs to get in my pants, apparently.”  
  
He raised an eyebrow in amusement when Blaine choked on his drink, falling back in his seat to stare at Matt incredulously, but he looked even more surprised when the words, “Be careful, because that’s exactly what happened to me,” left Blaine’s mouth before he could stop them.  
  
As soon as he said them, Blaine’s mouth clamped shut and he could feel the red heat of a blush spreading over the back of his neck. He waited uncomfortably for the awkward silence to spread between them but instead his head flew up at the sound of Matt’s chuckle, his words of, “Well, it seems to have worked out pretty well for you, so I’ll cross my fingers.”  
  
He took Matt in with utter confusion in his eyes, trying to read into the dimple in his left cheek and the crinkles around his eyes, but all he saw was a smile, easy and reassuring and he didn’t know what he was supposed to say to that. “I . . . sorry, what?”  
  
Matt snorted, reaching across the table and pulling Blaine’s cup toward himself. “You and he worked things out, then?” he asked, the calm in his voice a little forced, but present nonetheless. He took a sip and wrinkled his nose, pushing the coffee back toward Blaine with an afterthought of, “Shit, I forgot how bitter you drink your coffee.”  
  
Blaine ignored the side comment, his puzzled curiosity causing him to lean forward across the table. They hadn’t been hiding anything, but he’d found himself suddenly allowing himself to be consumed with his music, with school and with Kurt. He realized, then, that it had been several weeks since he’d said more to Cas than the quick greeting as he made his way to the stage at the back of Hampton’s.  
  
He blinked when he realized he’d again ended up lost in thought, focusing to see Matt sitting back silently in his seat, calmly waiting for him to process his own thoughts. “Yeah, we did,” Blaine said slowly. “How do you—”  
  
“Saw you . . . hmm, I don’t know, a couple of weeks ago? You were walking in the direction of your apartment from . . . I assume a bar or club,” Matt shrugged, as though it weren’t any big deal, as though it didn’t mean anything. “ _You_ were drunk off your ass and dancing around in the middle of the street singing at the falling snow. Made me regret not trying to get you drunk more often.”  
  
Matt stopped talking to laugh at the shade of beet red that invaded Blaine’s cheeks as he remembered the night. Surprises and drinks and walks home in the cold, sweat chilling under layers of clothing. Warm presses of skin and songs about blackbirds and words whispered in all the corners of one’s mind.  
  
“He—umm, _Kurt_ ” Matt corrected softly, clearing this throat and Blaine saw it, finally. The thread of bitterness and resentment that Blaine had been expecting, carefully concealed by the man who was in possession of it. The kind that should have been lost in the passage of time but still lingered, biding it’s time under Matt’s skin. But it was gone as quickly as it came, lost in the soft chuckle that suddenly rang through Matt, amusement rather than distain the key to his memory. “He was chasing after you trying to keep you from getting yourself killed and all you could do in response was grab his hands and just start . . . dancing with him. And I . . .” he paused, exhaling shortly through his nose. His hand reached up to scratch absentmindedly at his temple as his gaze fell to the smooth, coffee-stained wood of the table. Like he had rehearsed and planned, just in case, but in the moment it was harder than he had expected. He exhaled again before glancing up at Blaine. “Are you happy?”  
  
“I . . . what?”  
  
“Does he make you happy?” Matt murmured, a small half-smile creeping through the corners of his lips even as his eyes shone with a hint of sadness.  
  
“I . . . what do you want me to say, Matt?”  
  
Matt shook his head. “Not that.”  
  
“Not what?”  
  
“What you think I want to hear.”  
  
He wondered if Matt was somehow trying to make him hesitate more, trip him up and force him to stop and think about it but without missing another beat he answered, “Yeah, he does.”  
  
“Good.”  
  
It was only then that silence settled between them like a blanket, muffling out the noise around them and cocooning them. Matt sat back with a soft smile and Blaine realized that he’d said everything he wanted to and it worked to remind him of all the things he should have said at one point. Instead he smiled, letting his own answer to the question settle comfortably under his skin. His eyes flickered to the phone, silent like his worry, but instead he glanced up and murmured, “Do you remember what I was singing?”  
  
Matt smirked. “I think it was ‘Singing in the Rain.’ He tried to convince you it wasn’t raining, but you were undeterred.”  
  
“God.”  
  
“I think at one point you tried to pull the Gene Kelley ‘swinging-around-a-lamppost’ move. You were significantly less graceful,” Matt continued with a teasing smirk.  
  
“Well, there’s no living up to Gene Kelley.”  
  
“This is true.”  
  
“Explains the mystery bruise on my calf, though,” Blaine shot back quickly, holding back a grin as Matt laughed loudly, his head falling back and shaking his hair out of his eyes. He was struck with a pain in his chest, a sinking feeling dragging him down and without removing his gaze from Matt the volume of his voice fell and he murmured, “I’m so sorry, Matt.”  
  
The latter’s laughter died out like the echoes of a tolling bell and he looked back at Blaine with the utmost seriousness in his eyes. “I know.”  
  
“I didn’t mean for it to fall apart like that.”  
  
“I _know_ ,” Matt insisted.  
  
Blaine shook his head, staring at Matt in utter disbelief. “How are you not more pissed off right now?”  
  
Matt shrugged, raking a hand through his hair. “I was. I _really_ was. But I’ve had a lot of time to think.”  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow. “And?”  
  
“And . . .” Matt started, but stopped as the door of the café jingled and Cooper barged in as only Cooper would, spotting Blaine almost instantly and swerving in their direction.  
  
“Be prepared because I’m venting all over you and no one can save you,” he warned, pointing his finger menacingly in Blaine’s direction, but Blaine could clearly see the joke in his eye, the way he had calmed down on the chilling walk to Panera. Before Blaine could respond, however, Cooper turned to beam at Matt. “Matt! I didn’t know you’d be here!”  
  
Matt grinned at Cooper but stood, vacating his seat. “I’m actually just leaving.”  
  
Cooper frowned, glancing between the two of them curiously and Blaine’s lips flattened into a thin line. He knew exactly why Cooper was confused. Matt loved Cooper, probably more than a non-relation or friend had since Cooper’s ridiculous attempts to get into Hollywood his sophomore year of college, so for him to waste the opportunity to hang out was usually something unheard of.  
  
“Nah, Mattie, don’t leave on my account.”  
  
Matt laughed. “No, no, I was leaving anyway. I’ve got places to go, people to see,” he commented cheekily with a wink before looking seriously at Blaine. “We okay, Blaine?”  
  
Blaine felt a smile blooming across his face, surprised to find the answer was easier, less complicated than he expected. “Absolutely.”  
  
“Cool. I’m glad you’re happy. See you, Coop,” Matt nodded, swinging one of his backpack straps over his shoulder and quickly making his way out of the restaurant.  
  
Cooper made a puzzled face at Matt’s back turning to look at Blaine. “Okay, an explanation of _that_ might save you,” he said slowly before dropping his bag near his chair and making his way to the counter to order food.  
  
Blaine watched him go, the feeling of pleasure at seeing his brother mixed in with the swirl of emotion left hovering over his table by Matt, like a little cumulous cloud. He felt drained, like he’d just run a marathon, but in that feeling there was something more, something profoundly sure. An undeniable pleasure, like that which came from the satisfaction of winning that very race that had exhausted him. He pulled his phone toward him and quickly typed a message, ignoring Cooper as he bantered with the pretty blonde at the cash register.  
  
 **To Matt** : Are you happy?  
 **From Matt** : I’m getting there.  
  
He’d just finished reading out Matt’s reply message, the corners of his mouth curving upward in light of the strange little moment of closure when Cooper made his way over with his food and dropped down in his seat. Despite the drink that he brought back with him, he grinned casually at Blaine, his own troubles seemingly forgotten and reached across the table to grab Blaine’s half-full cup of coffee. “You two didn’t break up or something, did you?”  
  
Blaine winced at the teasing tone. “Uh, we did, actually.”  
  
Cooper flashed him a surprised look. “Seriously? When?” he asked incredulously, lifting the cup to his lips and starting to drink.  
  
“Night of Dad’s birthday thing.”  
  
Cooper’s eyes flew open and his jaw slackened, releasing his mouthful of coffee back into the dull-red ceramic cup. “ _Seriously_? Blaine, that was months ago!”  
  
“Coop, you’re disgusting,” Blaine groaned, holding his hands out as Cooper slid the cup back toward him, staring at him as though it had been laced with poison.  
  
Cooper rolled his eyes and leaned forward in his seat, his gaze a pretty little mixture of gossip-driven curiosity and brotherly concern. “Explain.”  
  
Blaine sighed, bringing a hand up to rub his eyes when Cooper ceased pushing the cup of coffee back toward Blaine. Without even thinking about it his gaze fell on his cell phone and his hand inched toward it tentatively, fingers sweeping over the smooth screen, as though willing it to come to life. “It’s complicated,” he answered truthfully, feeling Cooper’s gaze resting on him. He sensed the moment when Cooper opened his mouth and he laughed abruptly, holding up his hand and looking at his brother with suddenly-twinkling eyes. “No, I’m serious. I’m not hiding anything, I’m just trying to make sure of something before I go spreading the merry news round the square,” he murmured, gazing reassuringly at Cooper. “And it’s definitely not a story for when my brother comes to meet me for lunch and his opening line is, ‘I’m venting all over you and no one can save you,’” he teased.  
  
The cue made Cooper groan and he slid down dramatically in his seat until his neck was resting against the top of the backrest. “Don’t remind me, you proved a nice distraction.”  
  
Blaine snorted, watching Cooper as his hand raked through his hair and flopped out of its styling. “Convicts still giving you trouble, are they?”  
  
Cooper made a noise. “I should have stayed in Hollywood.”  
  
“Whatever, you love your job,” Blaine countered and Cooper laughed loudly, his throat moving against the stretch of his skin and he eyed Blaine over the curve of his cheekbones. Blaine grinned cheekily as Cooper paused for a beat before sitting up and re-swallowing the mouthful of coffee that he’d attempted to consume previously.  
  
“I do,” he admitted, setting the cup of coffee down again. “Sometimes I just stop and think of how crazy it is. How I can’t be cut out for what I’m doing right now, you know? I feel like I should be sitting in an office taking the cases I want to take from the clients I want to help, not being forced into daily personality clashes with convicts who couldn’t give a rat’s ass.”  
  
“You’ll work your way up to it,” Blaine replied soothingly. He’d had this conversation with Cooper before and he understood his brother. Maybe it hadn’t always been that way, but he did. He knew Cooper, as much as he joked and blew things off, was passionate about what he wanted to do with the career he had chosen, so much so that anything that looked like a roadblock set him off.  
  
Cooper shook his head, wrinkling his nose at the cooling coffee before him. “It’s just . . . It’s so weird, B.”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“Just . . . some of the people in there . . . they’re just fucking _kids_ , you know? Sometimes they’re barely legal and they’ve been to hell and back and some of them literally do not give a shit, you know? And it just frustrates me so much that they won’t even let anyone fucking _help_. And I’m getting frustrated with myself because it just reminds me of that whole thing with you and—” he stopped, closing his mouth slowly. Blaine’s brow furrowed in confusion and he was about to prompt Cooper to continue when a familiar song started playing from the confines of Cooper’s coat pocket, causing Cooper to groan loudly and reach for his cell phone.  
  
Blaine snorted. “You still haven’t changed your ringtone,” he smirked as Cooper stared at the caller ID.  
  
Cooper swiftly raised his free hand to flip Blaine off. “Fuck you, it was a flawless period in my life and you know it,” he muttered distractedly, silencing the phone quickly and placing it face-down on the table. “Jesus, if they call me about Karofsky’s lawyer one more time I’m burning down his office, I swear. I’m not even kidding right now.”  
  
Blaine froze mid-way through a prepared dig at Cooper’s ringtone, the entire line of his body stiffening, with the exception of his jaw, which slackened, his mouth falling open in a startling imitation of his brother from moments passed. It was as though his brain had been filled with fog, all his thoughts blurred, fraying around the edges and collapsing on themselves in the middle. The only clear one, looming like a shadow, carving its way through the white haze of Blaine’s thoughts, was that name, dropped so casually Blaine had to convince himself that it wasn’t wholly meaningless.  
  
He swallowed hard as he again stared down at the dark phone lying on the table in front of him.  
  
“Dave Karofsky?” he asked softly, and though he could barely hear himself through the unholy roar in his ears, Cooper’s reaction told him all about the rough croak in his voice.  
  
Cooper’s eyes widened at the reaction to the name and he leaned forward with a furrowed brow, every inch of him melting into concern. “Blaine?” he murmured, sounding as worried as he looked, his eyes dashing rapidly across Blaine’s face. His mouth stayed open as though he wanted to ask Blaine something, but didn’t quite know what. They remained like that for a long time, each looking at the other like he was an apparition before Cooper seemed to decide on a question and asked, “Do you know him or something?”  
  
The walls of Blaine’s throat rubbed together roughly as he swallowed, friction hard and burning like sandpaper and he tried to calm himself down, keep his thoughts in line, because he knew nothing. Because he had to be overreacting, the random presence of the name at various intervals in his life filling him with unease. He cleared this throat and shrugged noncommittally, fiddling with his cell phone. “Name’s familiar,” he muttered, forcing casualness into his voice. “This something to do with the case that’s got you all frustrated?”  
  
Cooper didn’t move. His expression didn’t shift further into worry but it also didn’t relax, remaining perfectly fixed on Blaine as though he were sitting for a painting or waiting to be carved into stone. He nodded slowly, his gaze narrowed before he responded. “He’s the plaintiff. Or, rather, his family is.”  
  
“Oh?” Blaine breathed, mind racing but going so fast that any rational thoughts were simply a blur.  
  
Cooper frowned. “I’m not sure I can really go into detail,” he said slowly, looking unsure of what to think of Blaine’s sudden interest. He remained silent for the briefest of moments, waiting for some sort of reaction in Blaine, waiting for him to say something to ease the worry but instead Blaine ducked his head and focused on the dark cell phone in front of him, pressing the home button to stare at the lit screen until it died, repeating the motion each time. Cooper hated that he didn’t know what to think if it, that he didn’t know the world that Blaine had somehow formed around himself since they’d had a chance to properly speak and he relented. “He’s lying in the hospital in a coma.”  
  
Blaine’s head flew up, his eyes widening as though faced with the deepest horror of his heart. “ _What_?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s a rough situation—fuck it, it’s kind of a mess,” Cooper amended, lifting his hand to rub at his temples. “The kid I’ve been _trying_ to work with is the one that put him there.”  
  
Blaine’s blood ran cold, slush churning in his veins.  
  
“Normally it’d be a closed case,” Cooper continued, sounding tired and some of his exhaustion cloaking his concern. “Kid’s got a record of this sort of thing, but it wasn’t as bad and he was underage last time he was in, so they just stuck him in jouvie for a couple of months. So really right now it would only be up to the judge to deal out punishment. But one of the cops that brought him in seemed to think there was something more to it, so here I am, stuck dealing with a kid who makes communication with brick walls look easy—Blaine? Blaine!” Cooper started, sitting up straight in his seat as Blaine shot out of his own, grip firm around his cell phone as he darted past Cooper and crashed out of the restaurant, his fingers stumbling over the smooth screen of the phone, misdialing numbers before finally falling across the correct digits.  
  
He left his coat inside and the chill of late winter bit harshly against his skin but he could barely feel it, his nerves numb even before he’d stepped outside of the warm air of the restaurant. He could feel specific things, selectively focusing on the way the edges of his iPhone cut into his fingers from the tightness of his grip on it. The ringing of it as it pressed against his ear sounded loud through his head like an alarm. He could barely feel Cooper’s eyes on him as he paced outside the window, his brother looking torn between the shock of staying put and the need to follow Blaine out into the cold.  
  
“Pick up,” he muttered into the phone, his head bent and his reflection in the Panera windows mimicking his walk back and forth in front of the restaurant. “Christ, pick up your fucking phone and tell me you haven’t gone and done anything stupid,” he begged, his bottom lip disappearing under the hard confines of his teeth. Each empty ring jolted through his body like an electric shock, trying to thrust his heart back to life but as they died out it stopped beating. “Kurt, please.”  
  
His hand dropped down from where it was holding his phone against his ear as soon as he heard the sound of Kurt’s voicemail. He swallowed forcibly and stood stock still, his gaze trained in front of him but not seeing anything of the milieu of people on the sidewalk before him. He tried to think, tried to find some way to force life back into his muscles. Time seemed to crawl by him as his glossed gaze remained frozen on the blur of the crowd moving around him, body far away from the shoulders that jostled him as they hurried past.  
  
He heard his name behind him as though through a fog and the sound of it jolted him. He spun around to face a worried looking Cooper, holding out his coat toward Blaine warily, as though somehow afraid that Blaine was going to explode like a bomb if he got too close.  
  
Cooper opened his mouth to say something, but Blaine beat him to it, stepping forward quickly. “Are you going back to work today?”  
  
“Blaine, what’s going on?” Cooper countered, looking more spooked by the minute.  
  
“Answer the question,” Blaine insisted.  
  
“Yeah, but—”  
  
“Kurt Hummel,” Blaine said abruptly and Cooper stopped talking. “Is that the kid you’re supposed to be defending?”  
  
Cooper’s look of shocked concern melted into one of pure puzzlement, mixed with a strange little hint of suspicion. “How do you know that?”  
  
Rather than freezing him again, the confirmation worked to spurn Blaine to life and, ignoring the cold and the confused countenance of his brother and the unrelenting grip that had taken a hold of his heart, he moved quickly toward the edge of the sidewalk and waved his hand in the direction of the cars driving down the road. “I’m coming with you,” he muttered, more to himself than to Cooper, but almost instantly he found his brother at his side.  
  
“Blaine, what the hell is going on?” Cooper insisted, leaning so that he was directly in Blaine’s line of vision. His light eyes swam with almost every emotion recognizable and it caught Blaine by surprise. He licked his lips as a taxi started slowing down, pulling up to the curb beside them, but he looked at Cooper, whose entire face had dissolved into a seriousness that Blaine rarely saw from him. “Do you know something about all this?”  
  
“Cooper . . .” Blaine breathed, the sigh escaping him before he could stop it and he closed his eyes, trying to stay afloat in the mess of conflicting feelings raging through his body.  
  
Cooper shook his head, his eyes flashing and something of the lawyer in him awakening. “No, don’t ‘Cooper’ me. Do you know something?”  
  
“I . . . I know him, but Cooper,” Blaine muttered, shaking his head and glancing at the taxi driver apologetically at the hold up. “I’m having a little trouble processing words. I just . . . I need to see something for myself and then I promise I’ll explain everything to you.”  
  
“Blaine—”  
  
“Cooper, please, just trust me.”  
  
Cooper opened his mouth to argue, but at the last two words a look flashed across his face, one that surprised Blaine in its rawness. His gaze softened and glazed, like he had fallen into some strange memory and he was looking at Blaine with an expression that Blaine didn’t think he’d seen in a long time. Every muscle, every curved line of his face looked inexplicably _guilty_ and haunted in a way that Blaine couldn’t understand and eventually Cooper sighed, shaking his head and pulling open the door of the taxi.  
  
“Get in before I change my mind.”  


* * *

  
Blaine didn’t say a word during the taxi ride to the station. He could feel Cooper’s gaze passing from the window to him at almost perfectly-timed intervals, but, thankfully, that same expression of Cooper’s, that same little reaction to Blaine’s plea to trust him remained and after brief moments of staring at Blaine, Cooper would either turn back to the window with a heavy sigh or type something out on his cell phone, his brow furrowed in concentration.  
  
Blaine felt guilty about it, though he couldn’t quite pinpoint the reason why. He’d seen that expression on Cooper’s face before, but for the life of him couldn’t place it. His mind swirled and his stomach churned like he was about to be sick and in the hot twist of _Kurt_ and _Karofsky_ and other seemingly significant words that infiltrated his muscles, he couldn’t bring himself to focus on Cooper. He stared out the window at the blur of a moving world and he himself felt uncomfortably like he was standing still.  
  
He hated that feeling, despised it from pure experience.  
  
He wanted to charge into the station the minute the taxi pulled up to it and could barely resist the urge to leap out of the canary-colored vehicle before it had even rolled to a complete stop. He was halfway up the steps when he felt Cooper’s hand close around his wrist, holding him back so that his brother could pass him, flashing an ID once inside the building and ducking down a long corridor.  
  
Blaine could feel his heart fluttering erratically, could almost feel it in his throat as each of his steps echoed loudly throughout the silent hallway. Cooper glanced over his shoulder at him every several paces, almost to make sure that he was there, but it was more than just a quick gaze. It would often linger, eyes mixed with worry and suspicion and profound curiosity, only looking away to make sure that he hadn’t passed the door that he was looking for.  
  
After what seemed like miles, he stopped in front of a door that looked the same to Blaine as every other, ordinary and brown and incredibly solid and Blaine didn’t know how he felt about it. He’s never quite so disliked a door before.  
  
The room he follows Cooper into is filled with a surprising number of people. A man and a woman are poring over documents at a small, square table under a window leading to the outside world, sunlight streaming. There’s a metal bookshelf behind the woman in question, filled with rows of binders all the same size, but haphazardly arranged, as though they were being pulled out and put back in a hurry. There was a door in the wall directly to the right, the same as the one that Cooper had just walked through it and, leaning against the space of wall directly between it and a large, rectangular window is a police officer. His hand is resting lightly on the gun held safe in his holster, but the line of his shoulders is poised beneath his uniform as he watches the scene playing out in the other room, like one of those cop shows that Blaine had only ever seen on TV when his father had been flipping through the channels on Sunday afternoons.  
  
There was a fourth person in the room, a tall, older-looking gentleman standing on the other side of the one-way window. He too was observing the scene with a furrowed brow, though the line of his body was less tense and poised for action than the officer mirroring him. Instead, his shoulders seemed to sag slightly, even as his arms crossed in front of his chest, and he looked tired, like he knew that he was fighting a losing battle against his very will. It was toward him that Cooper went directly, slipping into the mode of his job and almost completely forgetting that his younger brother was with him.  
  
The man in question blinked at the sound of Cooper’s footsteps, turning his tired green eyes onto the older Anderson brother.  
  
“Anything, Jimmy?” Cooper asked, resting his hand on the edge of the window and looking at his boss rather than the play occurring beyond the glass.  
  
“Nothing. Lexi has been in there for almost an hour with him, but it’s the same as always,” was the curt response as a hand was run through short, dark hair peppered with grey. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was a damn mute—Who the hell is this, Cooper?”  
  
Cooper started as attention was turned to his brother, but Blaine could barely register it. After an initial sweep of the room his eyes had again fallen to the scene from the window and he had unconsciously taken several steps forward, his eyes wide and his chest clenching. He ignored everyone around him until he got to the window, placing his hands on the sill, fingers curving around the wood hard to keep his balance.  
  
He stared in an unbearable amount of disbelief at the near-empty room. The only object in it was a long table, stretching almost the length of the confinement of the four walls. On one end, near the door that connected the two rooms, just beyond the wall of the poised police officer, was a woman. She looked to be a couple of years older than Cooper, with hair a stunning auburn that reminded Blaine of the changing of seasons and eyes just a shade lighter than the way Blaine took his coffee. She was pacing along her end of the table, speaking words that didn’t quite register with Blaine nor, apparently, their intended recipient, a fact that was evident in the growing frustration that etched the smooth curves of her face.  
  
But Blaine ignored her, his gaze focusing only on the sole other occupant of the small room. The boy lounging in the plain, wooden chair at the other end of the table, his long legs stretched out before him, looking like they could go on for miles. The sharp curves of his face were formed in a disinterested expression and he sat with one elbow resting on the wood of the table, his head leaning against it. There was a smooth, clean cut across his left cheekbone, but his face wasn’t marred by any other signs of violence; the only visible portions of skin otherwise were exposed by the collar of his shirt and the short cut of his sleeves, patches of the porcelain skin there blemished with newly-forming bruises that cut off circulation in Blaine’s veins. The boy didn’t appear to be listening to a word she was saying, his cerulean eyes dull and glossy as he gazed in front of him, eyes almost directed at the exact spot in the window in the wall where Blaine’s face had fallen into a distraught expression. He only looked up briefly, his gaze never changing as he followed the woman—for some reason, the name Lexi echoed through the back of Blaine’s mind even when nothing else did. The movement seemed to flick un-styled, light brown bangs into cloud-covered eyes. The only action besides the movement of the boy’s eyes was the quick sweep of his free hand to brush hair out of his face.  
  
Blaine thought he could hear the sound of his own name being said; in the reflection of the window he could just barely see the movement of Cooper’s hands as he tried to explain things that he himself had yet to have an explanation for.  
  
Blaine’s exhale was shaky as the boys hypnotic eyes ceased following the auburn-haired woman across the room and returned to where they were staring, unseeing, at Blaine through the one-way interrogation window and Blaine closed his eyes. He tried to control the breaths that were coming in short little bursts, unwilling to look until he had control of himself, of his own panic at seeing the boy that for almost a year, had barely said a word to him besides the curtly offered drink order. The boy that sat as though he could not care at all, the very image of defensive retreat.  
  
“Fuck, Kurt,” Blaine breathed, opening his eyes finally in the hopes that the picture in front of him had somehow changed, like changing it was as easy as switching the channels on a television.  
  
It hadn’t.


	25. Chapter 25

“You have to let me talk to him,” Blaine said swiftly, the words tumbling out of him like water over the edge of a cliff and he turned swiftly on his heel to face his brother.  
  
Cooper gazed at him as though he’d sprouted wings while the man next to him looked like he was resisting the urge to sputter in indignation. “No.”  
  
Blaine closed his eyes, his lips flattening in a thin line. His inhale was shaky and he could feel the liquid building in his eyes as he looked at his brother. “Coop—”  
  
“Blaine, no,” Cooper asserted, taking a step toward him and Blaine couldn’t help but take a step back at the determined expression in his eyes, the lawyer in him mixing with the natural urge to protect his family. “By all rights you shouldn’t even fucking be here right now and I’m not doing any more until you tell me what the fuck you know about all this.”  
  
Blaine’s eyes widened and he felt the cool of the window press against his back, a soft thud echoing through the room. Cooper’s frown twitched at the sound and his gaze flashed quickly over Blaine’s shoulder and Blaine wondered whether the occupants in the room had reacted at all to the noise.  
  
He bit his lip and turned around again, gaze passing over the action in the room as though it were nothing more than something fictional playing itself out on a television set. On her side of the room, the girl Cooper’s boss had called Lexi was turning away from the mirror with a sigh and leaning forward across the table, her tired gaze directed at Kurt. “Look, kid, the guards were saying how you were shooting your mouth off at your cellmate, so don’t think you can just sit there like paint drying on the wall. I sincerely doubt you have absolutely nothing to say.”  
  
Blaine watched as Kurt looked up at her and he was shocked at the light in his eyes, the flame that had burned all those times he’d seen Kurt at the bar, when the only words they had ever exchanged were beer orders and snipped insults. The kind that rose so high that it blocked out everything else there was to Kurt besides that cloak he always wore.  
  
Kurt’s lips twisted into a smirk as he stared at her, eyes passing from her frustrated, coffee-dark eyes to her auburn hair. “I do have something to say,” he said finally and, behind Blaine, Cooper made a noise of surprise and said something quickly to one of the other people in the room, something that was lost on Blaine as he stared at the boy through the window.  
  
Lexi’s eyebrows flew up under her bangs and without thinking she flashed a quick look at the one-way mirror. “Really?”  
  
Kurt sneered lightly. “Yeah. Why don’t you call your partner back in here? His attempts at interrogation are as pathetic as yours but he’s easier on the eyes and if we’re going to sit here for hours I’d rather have his pretty little ass to stare at than yours.”  
  
Behind Blaine, the hush that had settled over the room in anticipation of whatever miracle might finally come out of Kurt’s mouth dissolved into slight cacophony. There was a noise of someone kicking a chair and Cooper swore loudly. Blaine could just barely make out his reflection in the window as he started pacing, both his hands in his hair. Someone muttered something about starting to talk to witnesses, but Cooper shot him down, sighing something about there being no point if his defendant wasn’t willing to defend himself.  
  
“I can get him to talk to you,” Blaine said finally, his throat clenching and his words barely audible.  
  
So, so quiet, but at their uttering Cooper froze. From his place near the table below the other window he turned and stared at Blaine, his expression unreadable. He stood silently until Blaine turned to look at him again, his brows scrunched together and his eyes scrutinizing. Blaine held his gaze, the silence stretching between them and he was about to repeat himself when Cooper spoke.  
  
“What,” he murmured slowly, looking at Blaine as though he were attempting to read in between the hues of color glittering in Blaine’s eyes, “Makes you think that you, of all people, could get him to cooperate?”  
  
“I’m dating him.”  
  
Cooper’s mouth was open before Blaine even spoke, looking like he was ready to counter whatever he thought Blaine would say, but at his words his mouth closed abruptly, his eyes narrowing in confusion. “You’re dating him?” he repeated, staring incredulously at Blaine, swirling the words around in his mouth as though that would aid him in making sense of them. Blaine nodded slowly in response and Cooper tilted his head, continuing to observe him, mind racing as to what he ought to do with that information. “What do you know about all this?”  
  
Blaine frowned, looking a little frustrated, the emotion mixing with that thread of desperation that had been with him since their conversation in Panera. “Seeing as you haven’t told me anything—”  
  
“So you didn’t know this was going to happen?”  
  
“Of course not!” Blaine exclaimed, but as the shout died down he fell silent, his bottom lip worried between his teeth. He cast his eyes down, their corners crinkled in thought. Should he have?  
  
Cooper nodded. “How do you know him?” he asked, but this time his voice was gentler, less urgent, like that of a brother.  
  
Blaine sighed, his bottom lip still pressed between the sharp points of his canines. “The bar.”  
  
Cooper raised an eyebrow at this and he strolled over to the two people at the binder-covered table, murmuring quickly to them before glancing back at Blaine. He looked like he was fighting the necessity to be business-like and abrupt. “Do you know Karofsky?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
Cooper frowned. “That’s not a no.”  
  
Blaine glanced over his shoulder into the other room, at Kurt, who had fallen silent once more, his chair pushed away from the table and his feet crossed neatly as they rested on its surface. “I’ve met him, but I don’t know anything about him except . . .” he paused, looking at his brother out of the corner of his eye. “Except for the fact that, as far as I understand it, all the football players at McKinley are wary of Kurt except for him. And . . . and the only time I’ve seen Kurt frightened was in his presence.”  
  
Cooper looked intrigued by this news, glancing between Blaine and his boss, who simply stood observing the scene, his face neutral. Cooper pursed his lips and took three long steps across the room to stand next to Blaine, his eyes scrutinizing the scene through the window, his brow furrowed in thought. Blaine swallowed thickly, taking in the smooth lines of Cooper’s profile, the sky-blue of his thoughtful eyes and, more than ever, he wished he could read Cooper’s mind.  
  
“Let me talk to him,” he pleaded quietly, his voice so low that he was sure only Cooper could hear him. “I want to help, Cooper. You have to let me help him.”  
  
Cooper exhaled, long and slow through his nose, the light heat of it leaving a pattern of fog on the window in front of him. He didn’t answer for a long time, his body still and his gaze directed at the silent boy lounging across the table from his partner. Blaine couldn’t perceive his thoughts in the long line of his mouth or the shadow of clouds across his eyes. All he could do was wait, his insides twisting together as Cooper thought.  
  
Cooper inhaled, the breath deep and when he exhaled there was a strum of vocal chords on air rushing out of him. “Bring Lexi back in here.”  
  
Blaine made a small, relieved noise as the police officer near the door moved, easing it open and saying the name of the woman in question. Inside the room, Blaine watched as Kurt smirked lightly and the auburn-haired woman cast a look at the officer, her expression an odd mixture of frustration and relief. She pursed her lips and, straightening up the papers in front of her, looked once at Kurt before standing from her chair and passing through the doorway.  
  
“Decided you’re flattered by the comment about your ass?” she shot at Cooper, her tone half-playful, refusing to be brought down by an uncooperative defendant. When he didn’t answer, she turned her gaze about the room and raised an eyebrow when it landed on Blaine. “Who’s this?”  
  
“My brother,” Cooper murmured, his voice still low and thoughtful. “Thinks he can get Hummel to talk.”  
  
Lexi snorted, sweeping a long strand of hair behind her ears as she looked Blaine up and down. “By all means, have at it,” she said, waving a hand casually toward the closed door through which she’d come.  
  
Cooper frowned, turning to look at her in surprise. “You came by that decision easily.”  
  
“Whatever gets this moving, Coop.”  
  
Cooper blinked at her, still standing with an impossibly frustrating stillness before nodding and glancing at Blaine. “Okay.”  
  
Blaine started, his insides untwisting and a rush of relief bursting into his veins like adrenaline. “Really?”  
  
Cooper nodded slowly, his eye taking in the way Blaine’s muscles had relaxed. “I don’t like it, but if it’s what I have to do.” He paused as Blaine smiled warmly at him before moving quickly toward the connecting door. “We’ll be ready in here in case something happens.”  
  
At those words Blaine stopped, his hand around the cool metal of the door handle. Something about the words made him uneasy and he frowned for a moment at the bright grey his hand was wrapped around before taking a deep breath and glancing up at Cooper. “Do something for me?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Don’t . . .” Blaine started, hesitating ever so slightly. “No matter what happens, don’t send anyone in there.”  
  
“Like hell I’m promising something like that,” Cooper retorted loudly, taking two steps forward to close the distance between himself and his brother.  
  
“Cooper—”  
  
“No, Blaine, there’s no fucking way,” Cooper all but growled, his eyes narrowed. “Do you know why that kid is in there? Because he landed a guy three times your size in the hospital. Because last year he gave half a football team a beating that shouldn’t have come from a tiny guy like him and now you want to go in there without me backing you up? Absolutely not.”  
  
“He’s not going to hurt me, Coop,” Blaine countered quietly.  
  
“Why, because he’s fucking you?” Blaine winced at the harshness of the tone. Cooper caught the motion and looked a little guilty, taking a step back and flattening his mussed hair in slight agitation. “I didn’t mean it like that—”  
  
“I know,” Blaine muttered, unable to help how clipped his tone came out.  
  
“—but you’re my brother, Blaine—”  
  
“So trust me.”  
  
Cooper groaned. “You know I trust you, Blaine. But I have no reason to trust that kid in there. Blaine, you’re my brother. Just let me protect you.”  
  
“Yeah, because you did such a fantastic job with that during Sadie Hawkins,” Blaine muttered without thinking and the minute he said it a heavy silence fell over the room.  
  
His eyes widened as he stared at Cooper, who had frozen as though petrified. The narrowed focus of his eyes remained but somewhere deep in his irises there was a shift, the harshness and familial necessity dissolving into something that stabbed a wound directly into the center of Blaine’s chest. Cool air swept in between them as Cooper took a step back, his mouth opened ever so slightly and the furrow in his brow changed, loosening and drawing upwards toward the center of his forehead. His jaw flexed as though he were trying to keep it steady and before Blaine could see the hurt intensifying in his eyes he turned away to gaze at Kurt through the thin glass of the window.  
  
“Cooper,” Blaine whispered, voice hushed with regret at putting such an expression on his brother’s face, for the feeling in his own gut, like he’d stabbed him in the back. “Shit, Cooper, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that . . .” He trailed off, as though expecting Cooper to shake off his sudden change of mood, point a finger in mock dramatic form at Blaine and say something idiotic the way only Cooper could. But instead Cooper’s face scrunched together slightly, like it was trying to keep emotions from spilling out and he remained facing the window, one fist clenched on the ledge, the other in the pocket of his blazer. He simply stood and stared, posture stiff, face a controlled expression.  
  
“You know I don’t think that, Coop,” Blaine murmured when all he received from the room was an uncomfortable silence, the remaining occupants pretending to busy themselves with things that were more their business.  
  
“That may be the case,” Cooper said eventually, not looking at Blaine. Blaine’s brow furrowed and he couldn’t be sure if Cooper was referring to what happened during Sadie Hawkins or Blaine’s assertion of his own beliefs. “But the minute I think you can’t handle it, I’m sending someone in.” Blaine opened his mouth to say something, but Cooper interrupted him, his tone distant. “Go in before I change my mind.”  
  
Blaine let out a sigh, closing his eyes momentarily to gather himself. He allowed his chest to be filled with air, his mind torn between staying and going, but his heart tugging him forward despite the hard feeling at the pit of his stomach. He didn’t even stop to think of what he would say or do before twisting the handle roughly and allowing the door to the other room to pop open.  
  
Inside, Kurt was sitting much like he’d been left, booted feet on the sanded wood of the table, his gaze directed with the epitome of bored scrutiny at the nails of his right hand. Blaine’s breath caught at the sight of him, but he didn’t say anything, simply waiting for the smirk that appeared on Kurt’s face to elicit the words that were sure to follow.  
  
“Are you two going with the good cop, bad cop routine, because I like that this has the potential to get kinky,” Kurt muttered toward his nails, his eyes never leaving them.  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow as he closed the door. “First off, my brother’s not a cop.”  
  
Kurt started so hard that his chair almost went toppling backward, the only thing saving him being the action of his legs dropping back down onto the floor. His gaze flew to Blaine and his brow crinkled with unreadable emotions as he let out a slow breath, on which the sound of Blaine’s name rode.  
  
“Second,” Blaine continued slowly, his tongue darting out unconsciously to wet his lips. “I figured you’d enjoy my pretty little ass more.”  
  
A battle of emotions fought across his face as he stared at Blaine, his mouth open, the pink of his tongue barely visible. Blaine glanced toward the window that was reflecting their room back to them and wondered about the observers on the other side of it. Whether they could see the fall of Kurt’s shoulders or the liquid of his eyes. The way he couldn’t quite seem to settle on which emotion he ought to feel.  
  
“Well,” he said finally, his voice cautious but rough, as though it were a great ordeal for him to speak. “You think Anderson is basically the most popular name on the planet and then it doesn’t really do anything for you.”  
  
“I don’t know . . . you look through any yearbook and there are always more Chos than there are Andersons,” Blaine replied swiftly, keeping his eyes trained on Kurt as he took a couple of slow steps into the room, feet pressing as gently along the floor as his own weight would allow, as though he were approaching a cornered animal. “Something about the water in East Asia.”  
  
“What are you doing here?” Kurt whispered, his jaw flexing.  
  
“You get a phone call, don’t you?” Blaine asked in response, trailing a finger along the smooth wood of the table once he reached it, glancing up through his lashes at Kurt as he did so. “When they arrest you, you get a phone call? Or at least that’s what all those cop shows have lead me to believe throughout the years.” Kurt didn’t answer. “I’ve got a phone, you know . . . You could have called me . . . on my phone.”  
  
Kurt inhaled slowly, his breath drawing the air in at a painstaking rate and Blaine could almost see him shoving his barriers down with all the force he could muster and he readied himself for whatever Kurt might have to say, not anticipating the soft, accusatory murmur of, “You shouldn’t be here.”  
  
Blaine clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth thoughtfully before plopping his ass down on the wood of the table, his eyes observing Kurt carefully. “I think what you mean is I should be here because you called me, _not_ because I accidentally found out while having lunch with my brother.”  
  
“I know why you’re here,” Kurt countered, pushing his chair back from the table and narrowing his eyes at Blaine, approaching him just as slowly as Blaine, but with the more dangerous air of a predator surrounding him, his voice low. “You’re here to _save_ me, aren’t you?”  
  
He waited for Blaine to speak but Blaine simply observed him, forcing his expression to stay neutral, his eyes trailing over the smooth contours of Kurt’s face, the pale skin and the dull patches of color marring it, like an attempt to ruin a painting. If Kurt tilted his head just right, Blaine knew he’d see the spot just under his jaw, the thin little line of a scar from the last time that he’d been alone with self-preservation instincts that he’d been unable to control.  
  
Kurt let out a huff of air when Blaine simply looked. “You are. The great Blaine Anderson picking up fuck-ups and leading them down the yellow brick road to salvation. I’ve told you before, I don’t need you to fucking save me. I don’t need saving, so you can pack up your little white knight persona and stop trying to ride to the rescue like a fucking Taylor Swift song.”  
  
“Are you implying you’re a damsel in distress?”  
  
Kurt swore loudly, taking two steps toward Blaine, his hand curling into a fist before he stopped just a foot short of him, his chest heaving slightly before he moved away again, choosing instead to walk away from the table, his frustrated energy hovering around him like a storm cloud. He reached the far wall, just out of sight of the cluster of people on the other side of it and turned on his heel, glaring daggers at Blaine, but it was the droplets of desperation in his gaze that betrayed him, lingering like rainwater on a window after a storm, glittering in the dim lamplight of the room. “I don’t need to be saved,” Kurt growled, each word harsh and slow for emphasis but Blaine didn’t so much as blink. “I’m not lost, there’s no map lying around with my name on it, so if you know what’s good for you you’ll back the fuck off and stop trying to play the hero.”  
  
“You know, if you didn’t want me hanging around, you shouldn’t have gone and tried so hard to make me fall in love with you, because now that you have you’re pretty much stuck with me,” Blaine replied calmly, even as the words sent a shock of adrenaline through his pulse, a warmth brewing at the pit of his stomach.  
  
Kurt froze at his words, his eyes widening and the whole of the build-up of his armor falling to the ground. “What?”  
  
Blaine exhaled slowly, for the first time casting his eyes to the ground with sadness at the utter disbelief in the boy’s words. He glanced up, the curve of his mouth still holding in it the briefest amount of melancholia, but his eyes shining with a warm amber glow that was anything but. “Like you didn’t know,” he murmured softly and Kurt’s jaw clenched, his eyes falling from Blaine’s to a random point on the floor, his gaze unfocused but his brow furrowed, that same, constant battle waging across his face. Blaine watched him for a moment before continuing. “You know, I’m usually a fan of grandiose, romantic gestures but those usually end in disaster,” he said, the corners of his mouth rising slightly toward his eyes in memory. The only indication that he had that Kurt was listening was the movement of his throat as he swallowed. “So, I—”  
  
“You shouldn’t.”  
  
Blaine stopped, raising an eyebrow at the interruption. “Shouldn’t what?”  
  
Kurt shook his head at the spot of floor near the legs of his chair and when he looked up his eyes blazed in determination, almost in anger at Blaine. “You shouldn’t love someone like me.”  
  
“I’m not much of a stickler for doing what I’m supposed to, to be honest—”  
  
“Then you’re an _idiot_ ,” Kurt interrupted, turning to face him and walking a couple of steps forward until they were nose to nose, the blue in his eyes churning like a storm-tossed sea. “Because I’m right, aren’t I? You still think you can rescue me but I have some news for you. This is it.” He spread his arms wide, his narrowed gaze peppered with distress that threatened to break Blaine’s heart. “This is all there is.” His voice was rough and harsh, like an attempt to change the depiction of intense emotion. “There isn’t any more to me. There’s this room and all the shit that brought me here and there’s nothing to _save_ or fix.”  
  
Blaine narrowed his eyes and dropped his weight down to his feet, standing until he and Kurt were almost nose to nose. “You know, any other day, I _might_ believe that. Not the first part, but the part where you tell me you don’t need to be saved, maybe. But not today.”  
  
He caught the hitch of Kurt’s breath at the closing of the space separating them and compression of the heat between their bodies. Blaine could feel his own adrenaline but he pushed it down, his eyes scanning the deep confines of Kurt’s. He glanced down to where Kurt’s mouth had opened to ask why, but the sound of the question had gotten lost somewhere along the way. “Because normally you have enough weaponry in the arsenal of your words to win an entire war by yourself,” he continued slowly, Kurt’s stillness almost like an impossibility. “And yet today . . . Now you lay them down in surrender and I’m trying to understand why.”  
  
Kurt inhaled sharply and took a step back, the space left by him cool and empty like an apparition. “I’m tired,” he muttered and, as though there were something dangerous in standing too close to Blaine, he walked swiftly to the other end of the room, facing the front wall, the door to the other room to his right. Blaine frowned, following Kurt with his gaze. “All my life I’ve had to fight and I’m _tired_.”  
  
“So you think you’re just going to let yourself get thrown into the slammer and you’ll live a quiet peaceful life?” Blaine snorted, mimicking Kurt’s movements until he was standing directly behind him, close enough for his breath to pass over the shell of Kurt’s ear like a ghost but not quite close enough to touch. “That is the single most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You give up now, you’re going to spend the rest of your life fighting until it literally kills you. I’m not going to let you do that.”  
  
Kurt turned swiftly on his heel, his eyes blazing defensively. “Did you miss the part where none of this has anything to do with you?”  
  
“And I _know_ you well enough to know that you don’t want this—”  
  
“—don’t you dare presume to tell me what I want!”  
  
Blaine hesitated, his jaw clenching as he tried to decide what to say next, whether to see if he could push Kurt to that breaking point that he needed to get to. His eyes scanned Kurt’s face quickly before whispering, “Your dad wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”  
  
Before he could have time to gauge the importance of the relationship, there were hands fisting in his cardigan and the force of Kurt’s strength whirling them around. There was the jolt of pain as the bricks of the wall collided with his back and he let out a grunt, his eyes squeezing shut.  
  
There was a flash of memory behind his eyes, of aluminum bats and hulking schoolmates and figures crumbled on the ground.  
  
Somewhere in the distance, through the fog of flashbacks, he could hear Kurt’s voice, a harsh, pained snarl of, “Don’t you dare. You know nothing about my dad! Nothing!”  
  
Instead of fighting, his arms had flown up in a surrender, one hand tipped toward the window like a stop sign and against the tightness of the grip pressing him against the wall he simply murmured, “November 11, 2009.”  
  
He opened his eyes at the stiffness that ran through the arms that were pinning him in place to see the bolt of anger that had run through Kurt fading into an expression of confusion, but there was something in between the two countenances, something that had faded almost as quickly as a snowflake touching down on warm ground would melt. Something almost akin to fear, but with a source that Blaine couldn’t identify.  
  
“What?” Kurt finally murmured, the rise and fall of his chest quick, but uneven.  
  
Blaine let go of the breath he’d been holding. It was the hushed nature of Kurt’s whisper, more of an exhale than anything else, that allowed his shoulders to slump in relief, even against the rough brick of the wall scratching against his back. That told him that he’d reached a point where he could break through. “November 11, 2009,” he repeated, holding Kurt’s gaze with every ounce of strength he possessed. “Carmel High was hosting a sectionals competition the Warblers were performing at. My friend Wes and I were driving down to see it. First competition after I’d graduated. We were just driving out of Lima when my car started acting up and we had to stop to have it looked at.”  
  
Kurt stared at him incredulously, fists gripping Blaine’s cardigan loosening ever so slightly, but the press of his hands against Blaine’s collarbones, the weight warm and solid, remained. Blaine’s tongue darted out to lick his lips. Kurt swallowed but his eyes didn’t flicker to the motion, their fearful expression remaining fixed on the molten amber of Blaine’s.  
  
When he didn’t reply Blaine continued, his voice low and direct. “We had to pull over at a local mechanic. It was small, and quaint, privately owned but the owner knew his stuff better than any professional mechanic my dad visited. Insanely nice guy, too.” Blaine could see Kurt holding his breath, the brightness in his eyes as he anticipated specifics, but Blaine didn’t get into them. “Just as we were finishing up and he had my car running like new, he excused himself to take a phone call. Wes and I waited by the car, but we could see him. See the expression on his face and God, it killed me because I recognized that look. I remembered it from the first time Cooper and I were in town after I came out and some jock from my school walked past us, catcalling. Calling me a fag in an undertone. They both got that same look. Devastated like they’d been stabbed in the back and just so _angry_ , like they would do anything to retaliate.”  
  
“ _Blaine_ —”  
  
“I didn’t say anything to him about it,” Blaine murmured softly, blinking away floods of emotion and taking in Kurt’s stock-still frame, the liquid swimming over the surface of his eyes as the date Blaine had mentioned finally struck a chord in him. “How do you bring up something like that, you know? You can’t exactly say you understand when there’s the chance that you don’t at all. That you’ve got it completely wrong. As . . . after we’d paid and as we were leaving, though . . .” Blaine stopped and laughed. “There was this boy that swept in like he owned the place, practically bursting at the seams in excitement, grinning like crazy and going on about how he’d hit it. The high note that ensured that he’d win a solo. _Defying Gravity_ , wasn’t it?” Blaine asked and Kurt inhaled sharply at the fact that he was being addressed fully, that the story was being acknowledged as more than a mere abstraction. “He went on and on until he noticed the cloud hanging over his father’s head. Until he found out about the anonymous phone call and mentioned that it didn’t matter. That he was used to it and it was just . . . heartbreaking, because no one should have to feel that way. But at the same time, you could see how strong he was, that boy. How utterly strong and striking he was. How he was willing to give up the achievement that had him beaming stronger than the sun because of how hurt his father was. Take the blow and lie back but his father wouldn’t let him. Told him there was no damn way that the Hummels get pushed around—”  
  
“Especially by cowards on the phone,” Kurt finished with a whisper and suddenly the warm presence of his hands was gone, dropping down to his sides. Blaine’s throat clenched at the distance put between them as Kurt stepped back, his eyes still caught in Blaine’s, his brow furrowed. “How long . . . ?” he started, his voice rough and his tone unclear.  
  
Blaine tilted his head. “Have I known that was you?” He shrugged, biting down on his bottom lip as he thought. “To be honest, I probably should have known since _Dancing Through Life_ in the tire shop—”  
  
“It was a different shop then,” Kurt muttered, the backs of his thighs colliding with the table and he leaned his weight on it, one arm curling round his stomach.  
  
Blaine nodded in acknowledgment. “Yeah . . . _Blackbird_ , though.” Kurt’s eyebrows drew together further in an expression of somber puzzlement. “I knew during _Blackbird_. Coincidentally,” he chuckled suddenly despite himself, willing Kurt’s gaze to meet his again, heated gold of his gaze calming the rough storm in Kurt’s, “That was also when I realized I was in love with you.”  
  
Kurt exhaled, dropping his gaze and shaking his head at the floor. When he looked up there wasn’t much of a trace of anger about him anymore, simply quiet defeat, his eyes glistening. “I’m not that person anymore,” he murmured, his gaze flickering like he was expecting a challenge from Blaine. His arms wrapped around his middle tightly, his armor scattered about the floor and his own person the only protection he had.  
  
“Aren’t you, though?” Blaine muttered contemplatively and held up a hand quickly when Kurt’s eyes blazed defiantly. “No, I understand it. I get that you’ve changed, that you’ve been to hell and back but . . .” He gently pushed himself away from the wall and walked until he stood in front of Kurt. Kurt followed him with his eyes, throat constricting as the distance between them closed and Blaine raised his hand tentatively, the backs of his fingers skimming gently across the smooth skin of Kurt’s cheekbone. “But you’re an idiot if you’re not that person anymore. Because honestly, have you listened to a word I’ve said? About how strong he was, how stunning and how much of a fighter you are? If anything’s changed, it’s how all those qualities in him have grown in you. But if you stop fighting now,” he muttered sadly, “I’m afraid that part of you will get destroyed.”  
  
“Blaine,” Kurt whispered, his voice choking on air and before Blaine could say anything there were arms around his neck, Kurt’s body colliding with his with enough force to send him stumbling back several paces from the table. Blaine gasped in surprise, his hands freezing by his sides even as Kurt pulled their bodies together, his shoulders shaking with what felt like suppressed sobs and his face buried in Blaine’s neck, the warmth of it quickening Blaine’s pulse and tingling his nerves.  
  
“I didn’t mean to do it,” Kurt mumbled into the skin of Blaine’s neck and Blaine let out a shaky exhale, his arms snaking around Kurt and pulling him closer, one arm completely around his waist, the other moving to thread through Kurt’s hair. “I just . . . he just, and I . . . I didn’t _want_ —”  
  
“I know, it’s okay,” Blaine murmured, turning his face into the feather-soft texture of Kurt’s hair. “It’s okay, just let me help.”  
  
“I did it, though. I wanted to and I . . . there’s no—” Kurt muttered, twisting his face until he was staring at a spot behind Blaine, his lips pressed against the curve of muscle in his upper arm. “There’s so much you don’t know—”  
  
“Shh, we’ll fix it,” Blaine reassured, his own lips between his teeth, his arms tightening around Kurt, as though he were afraid the boy would dissolve in a cloud of smoke and get blown away by the smallest of breezes.  
  
They stood silent like that for a moment, the rise and fall of Kurt’s chest slowing to a crawl of deep inhales and slow exhales. “I gave up the solo for him,” Kurt murmured softly and Blaine let out a small snort of acknowledgement, hand rubbing circles into the curve of Kurt’s lower back.  
  
Blaine had almost forgotten their observers on the other side of the wall, the click of the door opening a tiny reminder that jolted some movement into Kurt, who pulled back quickly, his eyes dashing to the auburn-haired woman that leaned against it. “You’re some pretty kinky fuckers with that window,” he muttered just loud enough to hear, but Blaine could see that she was aware the new thread that ran through his voice, the small hint of a jest.  
  
“It’s a requirement in law enforcement that you have to have a voyeuristic streak,” she countered smoothly. “You ready to talk, kid?”  
  
Kurt wrinkled his nose, leaning against the table and pulling Blaine toward him, his hand disappearing into the back pocket of his jeans. “Do I have to talk to you?” he deadpanned and Blaine refrained from smirking at the fact that Kurt still wasn’t planning on making it easy, despite the fact that he’d all but agreed to cooperate.  
  
“Would you prefer the Anderson brother with the good ass?”  
  
“I don’t think Blaine’s allowed to interrogate me,” Kurt countered swiftly, giving the body part in question a squeeze through the denim, causing Blaine to squawk loudly and dance several paces away, his glare meeting Kurt’s smirk.  
  
“Ouch,” Cooper muttered, making his way into the room and leaning next to Lexi, his arms crossed over his chest as his gaze swept with close scrutiny over Kurt. He still looked less relaxed than Lexi, something somber in his eyes but some of the earlier tension had seeped out of his shoulders. He didn’t meet Blaine’s gaze for a long time and when he did, his expression was neutral. There was something in his eyes that seemed to be searching for a way to ask Blaine to leave with as much politeness as he could and Blaine caught the look almost instantly, glancing between his brother and Kurt quickly before murmuring, “Well, I think it’s time I got my pretty little ass out of here, then.”  
  
Kurt looked like he wanted to protest despite the wink that Blaine threw his way, but he didn’t say anything as Blaine leaned in to give him a quick kiss on the cheek and walked slowly toward the door, giving Kurt every opportunity to stop him. In the doorway, he paused, allowing Lexi to move past him as he looked at Cooper.  
  
“Coop—”  
  
“Thanks, Blaine, you did good,” Cooper interrupted, his voice still a little clipped but his eyes twinkling with the sincerity of the statement.  
  
Blaine exhaled slowly before nodding. “I’m sorry,” he murmured truthfully, disappearing into the other room.  
  
Cooper followed him with his gaze momentarily before stepping away from the door and allowing it to slam shut on its own accord. He turned his eyes carefully to Kurt, watching his movements. The tongue that emerged between his lips to apply moisture to them. The small bit of hardness that eased its way into his shoulders as he was left alone with Cooper. The anxious curl of his fingers over the wood of the table he was leaning against.  
  
He didn’t look at Cooper until Cooper moved, making his way casually to the end of the table against which Kurt was leaning and pulling the chair there toward himself. Kurt watched him with an unreadable expression as he dropped down into it, stretching his legs out and intertwining the fingers of his hands as he rested them on his abdomen.  
  
He didn’t say anything for a long time, simply staring at Kurt until the latter muttered, “You were way better at this when you didn’t think I’d talk to you.”  
  
Cooper snorted in amusement, but otherwise didn’t move. “I’m just making sure you’re actually willing to let me help you.”  
  
Kurt seemed anxious at their proximity and shifted his weight back onto his feet, strolling around the table slowly, his eyes on the patterns in the wood. “I think you’re fighting a losing battle.”  
  
“Why?” Cooper uttered simply, sitting up and inching his chair close enough to the table so that he could lean his elbows against it, his chin resting on his hands.  
Kurt rolled his eyes, drawing Cooper’s attention to the stiff line of his jaw. It surprised him how the boy’s indifference had simply vanished, replaced by an incredibly raw emotion, shrouding him like mist. “Because I did it. I beat the shit out of him and also because this is Ohio, so even if I hadn’t, no bigoted, homophobic jury would admit to it.”  
  
Cooper pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I can win this case.”  
  
Kurt stopped walking and Cooper was surprised at the mocking nature that seemed to take over his person almost instantaneously, dripping from the single word that hung in the air between them. “Sure.”  
  
“I need three things, though,” Cooper continued smoothly, his countenance stern and business-like, like his profession. “One, I need a single, non-bigoted, non-homophobic jury member.” He watched as Kurt raised an eyebrow skeptically, his expression suddenly startlingly open. “Because with one member we can achieve a hung jury, which is advantageous if our chances of getting you off completely don’t pan out. And I’d say one out of twelve aren’t poor odds.  
  
“Two, I need Karofsky to wake up,” he continued, his voice growing somber and he could see the little color in Kurt’s cheeks draining at the sound of his name, “Because things are going to get a hell of a lot more difficult if this becomes a trial of murder rather than battery.”  
  
Kurt swallowed thickly, his skin just a shade pinker than porcelain. “And three?”  
  
Cooper smiled slightly. “Three, I need an angle and I’m pretty sure you can give me one.”  
  
Kurt blinked. “What makes you so sure there is an angle?”  
  
“Because you just told my brother that you didn’t mean to do it,” Cooper said gently. “That in itself is enough to make me think there’s more to the story.” He watched as Kurt’s hands rose to rub over his eyes and run through his hair, the product that had been in it when he was brought in completely gone.  
  
“I don’t know if I can help you,” Kurt admitted eventually, his voice low and distant, as though he were talking more to himself than to Cooper.  
  
Cooper’s brow furrowed and he leaned forward further, as though the action would allow him to discern the inner workings of Kurt’s mind. “Why not?”  
  
“I just . . .” Kurt hesitated, starting to pace restlessly, his hands still in his hair, his eyes shining a startling blue in his anxiety. “I don’t tell a lot of people things. I’ve told Blaine more than I’ve told anyone, but there’s still things he doesn’t know about me and Dave”—Cooper’s brow furrowed at the sudden use of Karofsky’s first name but he remained silent—“And I just . . . morally, I—”  
  
“You’re on trail for severe battery with a fairly high probability of going to jail if you do nothing,” Cooper interrupted, watching the flash of emotion passing through Kurt’s eyes like a lightning bolt at the direct harshness of his words. “If there was ever a time to drop your morals, this is it.” He paused, his brow furrowing with a slight realization and he stared at Kurt in surprise. “You . . . you’re protecting him.”  
  
Kurt didn’t say anything.  
  
Cooper exhaled, leaning back in his chair. “You beat the living shit out of him for reasons you have yet to tell me, and now you’re protecting him. Why?”  
  
Kurt’s mouth flattened into a thin line and his eyes suddenly shone with a determination so strong that Cooper physically had to sit back in response. Kurt turned to stare at him for a moment before dropping down into the chair he’d been originally sitting in. “I just . . .” he started slowly, each word enunciated, his gaze never wavering from Cooper’s. “I don’t believe in outing people.”  
  
“Yes, but you’re on tr—” Cooper started in annoyance before the meaning of Kurt’s words caught up to him and he stopped, his eyes crinkling in curiosity against the hardness of Kurt’s gaze. “Oh . . .” he breathed, tilting his head and looking at Kurt as though he’d never seen him before. “Oh . . . okay . . . I’m pretty sure that’s an angle I could work with.”


	26. Chapter 26

Years of watching (and making fun of, if he was going to be completely honest with himself) cop and law shows had always led Blaine to believe that there was some sort of obligation for a courtroom to be completely full for any sort of trial. So, when easing himself into the row of benches directly behind the still-empty defense table and casting his eyes about the brightly lit room, he was surprised at how empty it in fact was. It was still early, which was a fairly reasonable explanation for the phenomenon, but somehow, as his eyes scanned the scattered occupants of the room, he couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t going to get much fuller. It wouldn’t burst at the seams like the case at the end of _To Kill a Mockingbird_ or be as crowded as he’d always imagined the courtroom in _Twelve Angry Men_ had been, despite the fact that the play had never actually focused on much outside the juror’s deliberation.  
  
It was simply quiet, more air in the room than occupants. There was a small cluster of people sitting on the far side of the courtroom, behind the plaintiff’s desk and as he watched them, attempting to figure out whether they were as against the defendant as their seating choices seemed to imply, the doors to the courtroom opened and a handful of students, recognizable as the majority of the McKinley High glee club had Blaine chosen to look, filed in, their chatter dying away at the doorway to the room. He turned his head toward the front and watched the collection of jurors as they chatted amongst each other. He wondered which would be the ones to condemn and which to forgive.  
  
Blaine jumped slightly when he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder, tearing his eyes away from the juror’s benches and making a small, pained noise as his back hit the firm wood of the bench hard, sending a brief jolt of pain through his spine.  
  
His head flew up to catch Rachel’s apologetic gaze, her eyes widening at the realization that she’d startled him. “Sorry!” she exclaimed quickly, withdrawing her hand quickly, her dark brows furrowing together in one smooth motion.  
  
Blaine exhaled, his shoulders relaxing as he slid down slightly in his seat, training his eyes reassuringly on her, but not answering with anything more than a simple smile.  
  
The message seemed to be relayed, though, because she smiled brightly almost instantly and gestured at the empty spot of wood beside him. “This seat taken?”  
  
Blaine shook his head silently. Rachel’s grin continued to beam brightly as she dropped down into the space in question, turned slightly toward him. He met her gaze and, as he did so, her expression immediately softened into one of easy concern, her dark brown eyes glossy with emotion and her lips pursing sympathetically. “You okay, Blaine?”  
  
He regarded her curiously for a moment before shrugging. He could have answered with the affirmative or the negative and felt like both were correct. Yet, at the same time, either answer would have left his gut twisting. He followed her gaze as she looked behind them toward the group she’d come in with, making some sort of gesture at the people she’d come in with.  
Blaine let out a small puff of air at the sight of the New Directions before glancing curiously at Rachel, who had settled back on the bench and was regarding some of the jury with a soft expression that Blaine didn’t quite know how to interpret.  
  
“You’re not sitting with your friends?” he asked finally and a pleasant smile curved the corners of her mouth, though her eyes remained trained on one member of the jury in particular, his dark jacket glowing a rich, soft maroon in the warm lamplight of the room, a strange contrast to those worn by his peers.  
  
“I didn’t want you to sit up here alone,” she replied honestly, glancing at him with a half-smile.  
  
Something about the simple statement clenched Blaine’s chest, hot and confining as though lava had been poured into it and his eyes automatically went to the table set up directly on the other side of the barrier in front of him, where, when the trial eventually began, he would find his brother and Kurt. But at that moment the chair in front of him sat painfully empty, like some sort of horrible omen and he found himself grateful for the warm, barely present press of Rachel’s sweater-clad shoulder against his.  
  
“Where’s Finn?” he murmured quietly instead of thanking her but the way she shifted next to him seemed to imply that she understood. “I’m sure you’d much rather sit with him.”  
  
Rachel didn’t answer for a beat. Blaine turned to look at her, wondering what was bringing about hesitation in a girl that seemed to anything but, and found her looking at him curiously, almost as though she were surprised by the question. “He . . . he said he’d be sitting with his mom,” she answered slowly, her gaze flickering toward the back door of the room as though she were revealing an incredible secret and was worried that the one who had sworn her to that secrecy would come bursting into the room to reprimand her.  
  
Blaine frowned, old memories prodding at his mind gently. “I . . . the woman that Kurt’s dad was supposed to marry?”  
  
Rachel opened her mouth to answer but stopped in surprise when the answer she’d prepared wasn’t to the question she’d anticipated. “You know about the engagement ring?”  
  
He nodded. “Kurt mentioned it.”  
  
He’d mentioned a lot of things in the midst of quiet darkness, hesitating in his trust but open when it wasn’t forced, his voice wavering slightly in a way that seemed to imply that he wanted to cry, but was too proud and strong to allow himself the luxury.  
  
Rachel looked at him in wonder and he couldn’t help but ponder why it was that she looked so surprised. Her eyes glowed with something almost akin to awe, like she was once again struck by some odd little fact that she hadn’t anticipated, but before he could question it there was a hand on her shoulder and a tall, grey haired man leaned over her shoulder, murmuring something softly into her ear before pulling away, glancing between them with a smile. He nodded at Blaine, his gaze open and familiar even though Blaine was certain they’d never met, and he settled back on the bench behind them, briefly meeting the gaze of the man with the dark maroon jacket on the jury stand.  
  
Blaine was about to speak, to question the strangely familiar exchange, but was distracted by what sounded like an argument echoing through the hallway outside, one that quickly died down as Cooper crossed the open threshold to the courtroom and in several long strides was at the front, crossing the barrier separating the floor before the judges stand and dropping into his seat, a hand flying up to run through his hair but instead pausing inches from it and flopping back down, passing through the space above it.  
  
Blaine knew what it meant. It meant that he was anxious, far more so than he had let Blaine believe only the day before, but he was desperate not to let it show. Careful not to have a hair out of place or an expression on his face or a suit lapel not pressed flat along his chest.  
  
Blaine held his breath as Cooper glanced down at his watch and then over his shoulder, blue eyes meeting gold with a reassuring smile. Blaine wanted to say something, point out that even if no one else in the room knew Cooper’s mannerisms, he did and he certainly didn’t feel the reassurances much as he should have, but Cooper’s attention disappeared almost as quickly as it had come, passing to Rachel as she stood suddenly and closed the small distance between their bench and his table, dropping a note into his palm silently.  
  
Blaine gazed at her incredulously as she dropped back down in the seat next to him as though nothing inexplicable or striking had occurred, crossing her legs delicately. He stared at her as Cooper frowned at the folded parchment in his palm, opened it, quirked an eyebrow in interest as he read it and turned to gaze carefully at the juror’s bench. He pursed his lips, but didn’t acknowledge Rachel again, nor did she seem to expect it, saying nothing but standing quickly as the room was called to attention and the judge walked in, the doors at the back of the room closing with an imposing thud.  
  
But the sound was almost completely lost on Blaine, his eyes trained absently on the stern looking judge as she settled into her seat atop her stand and the courtroom followed in a wave after her. His brain was busy trying to figure out whether the fact that she was a woman was a good sign, but almost everything in her opening speech escaped him, like wholly empty words that he wasn’t meant to understand.  
  
He simply stared as Kurt was brought in, handcuffs clipped off before he was allowed to be led to the spot directly in front of Rachel, directly in the diagonal line connecting Blaine and the juror’s booth. He was still dressed in his usual ensemble, but there was something about the way he held himself that was different, that made the white shirt seem tidy and proper under the leather jacket that neatly graced his shoulders. The line of his jaw was tight, but not in anger; rather, it was in determination, the same that blazed in his eyes and in the pointed care of his movements.  
  
Cooper’s eyes were trained to the front, a hand curled around a mug of coffee that Blaine hadn’t noticed him bringing in. Only the back of his head was exposed to Blaine, his attention apparently rapt from behind, but the minute Kurt was next to him he leaned slowly to the side, never turning his eyes away from the judge’s stand, but quietly murmuring something to the boy.  
  
Kurt’s brow furrowed slightly in response, breaking the proud strength of his expression and, carefully as though he were trying to hide the movement, he looked at the jurors, straightening slightly at the narrowed gazes he received in return from most of them.  
  
Blaine wished he knew what it was he was looking for. What it had been that he found, that made him shift in his seat, his gaze searching for Rachel but landing on Blaine instead, the first object in his line of sight.  
  
Blaine exhaled softly, his throat clenching as it tried to swallow around its own sudden dryness. Kurt’s shoulders relaxed a little further, as though it had become a purely involuntary and natural reaction when Blaine was concerned, but, simultaneously, the calm on his face flickered and two small lines of worry appeared on his forehead. It was as though Blaine’s very presence, though expected, faltered Kurt’s confidence.  
  
Blaine gave him a small, confused look for a moment, but Kurt shook his head, the movement minute and barely there.  
  
Rachel leaned in ever so slightly and murmured, “The prosecution is watching you,” into his ear, as though that were something that ought to be avoided at all costs.  
  
Blaine looked quickly in that direction, the opposing lawyer’s eyes meeting his with a cool, calculating expression, holding his gaze until Blaine grew uncomfortable with it and turned away, a strange feeling in his stomach. Kurt’s worried look intensified and Blaine shook his head quickly, letting reassurance melt into his eyes. It formed the words on his lips, spoken without air or sound, relying only on an inert understanding.  
  
“I love you.”  
  
Kurt’s eyes widened, like he wasn’t used to hearing it, but the frown lines on his forehead disappeared and he stared at Blaine with that softness that he usually only reserved for dark corners of the night, huddled in his bed when he thought Blaine would still be asleep.  
  
He opened his mouth and Blaine almost froze in anticipation.  
  
“After,” Kurt whispered, just barely whispered, before the gruff voice of the prosecution called his attention back to the front of the room and he turned forward quickly without waiting for Blaine’s reaction.  
  
The movement caught Blaine’s breath in a painful manner and he forced his lungs to move properly, something difficult to do while simultaneously controlling the flood of thoughts in his head. He forced himself to listen to the dull drone of the voice of the prosecution’s lawyer, but that turned out to be a terrible idea.  
  
The representative for the prosecution, in Blaine’s completely and wholly biased opinion, was the type of man that Blaine felt he’d steer as far away from as possible, going to such lengths as to cross the street rather than share a sidewalk. There was something about the way he spoke, pacing and addressing the jury, telling them what the whole courtroom already knew, but the inflection in his voice obvious, the twisting of his words hard and driving and oily like hair that hadn’t been washed for days. It caused the bones of his jaw to clench so hard that if he’d felt anything but anger, he would have been afraid that they’d snap; the muscles in his fingers twitched, his hands curling into fists in his lap, so hard and tight that he could feel the painful press of his nails into the skin of his palm, perpendicular to the deep curve of his lifeline.  
  
He listened to the calm, sneering description of the reason for the trial, the condition of the patient lying in a hospital bed several miles from the courthouse. The casual mention and the smirk in Kurt’s direction when he spoke of “the violence of uncontrollable delinquents.”  
  
He swallowed hard when he felt Rachel’s eyes on him and the softness of her small hand enveloping one of his and moving it gently to her lap, her thumb moving over the stiffness of his thumb. She scooted closer, her shoulder warm against his.  
  
Cooper lounged in his seat, almost casually, his expression trained with an interest on his opposition, his eyes twinkling almost as though he were amused by the prosecution’s opening statements. Every once in a while his eyes hardened at a statement that served as nothing more than a heavily wielded attack, like water freezing into a solid block of ice and his right hand would rise to rest heavily on Kurt’s shoulder. Like he were trying to remind Kurt of the need to remain a picture of calm strength.  
  
Cooper stood in one smooth motion when the prosecutor finished his opening statement with a twisted sneer in Kurt’s direction, smoothing the lapels of his jacket as he went, turning slowly in a small circle as he acknowledged the whole of the room.  
  
His smile was pleasant and his demeanor easy, not only in stark contrast to the sneakily attacking nature of his opponent, but also to that of the one Blaine had expected from him. So also was his opening statement not entirely in line with those that Blaine had so meticulously researched online the night before.  
  
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he started, his voice not defensive but strong in its uncanny gentleness and Blaine immediately sensed the rustle of curious anticipation from the other side of the room and the shuffle of bodies from the juror’s stand. “I shall keep this statement brief and if you require an apology for my steering from a conventional statement then I shall gladly offer it. You are aware as to why we are here and I suppose that what I ought to say next is to lament at the fact that an innocent, unsuspecting individual was the victim of a senseless, undeserved act. But while I certainly have belief in the statement, I do not pretend to share the sentiments of my opponent. He will tell you that the victim I now speak of is his client and under normal circumstances, perhaps that fact would be true. But as there are two sides to each story—as I believe will quickly become evident in this case—there are also two faces to each statement and several ways to phrase an accusation.” He gazed quietly at the clusters of people behind the plaintiff’s desk before finally looking at the jurors. “I am here to tell the other side and to reveal to you that though the attack on David Karofsky may well be classified as a tragedy, it is not the only tragedy to have occurred and, above all, it does not automatically crown him with the title of a victim.” Beside Blaine, Rachel’s hand squeezed his own reassuringly as his own brow furrowed in slight confusion at Cooper’s statement. He followed his brother’s gaze to the juror’s stand and found faces peppered not only with slight confusion, but also intrigue. Curiosity as to what the defense could possibly have to present that would elicit such an opening statement. “My opponent,” Cooper continued, his voice dropping slightly, almost as though to see who would sit up straighter in their seats to hear him, “Takes it upon himself to offer that title to his client, but I shall allot that honor to you. I merely ask for your attention, your faith, and the piece of humanity that all men are gifted with, which would guide them away from the wrongful prosecution of an innocent person.”  
  
With nothing more than a respectful nod to the judge, Cooper sat down, leaning back in his seat with his legs stretched out before him and his hand curved around his mug. There was a heavy silence throughout the room, broken only by the rustle of people moving around in their seats. The stern-looking judge looked at Cooper curiously for a brief moment before banging her gavel (despite everything, Blaine could feel a snort rising up at the memory of Warblers council meetings) and calling a short recess.  
  
Blaine looked at Kurt and Cooper’s table again, but neither acknowledged him. Cooper leaned slightly into Kurt’s space, murmuring things to him in an undertone. Blaine watched Kurt for his reactions, in the hope that he would be able to read Cooper’s words in Kurt’s face, but Kurt barely moved as Cooper spoke, nodding once in the middle of the small flurry of words, but his expression of mild anxiety never wavering.  
  
Blaine shifted in his seat, his shoulder bumping into Rachel’s. He felt eyes on him and caught the gaze of the prosecutor staring at him again, leaning one arm over the barrier as he spoke in rapid undertones to someone that appeared to be his associate. Blaine felt his skin prickle under the dark look he was being given and he didn’t quite want to know why he would be of any interest to anyone on the opposing side.

* * *

He didn’t pay too much attention to the prosecution, if he was going to be perfectly honest with himself. He knew what would be said and he knew that if he listened too closely, if he took it too far to heart he would simply grow angry and do something that he would regret.  
  
There was a twisting manner to the attack that sickened him, a phrasing to questions asked that cut out any doubt for the answer that was expected, but somehow also couldn’t be proven.  
  
 _Would you elaborate, in your own words, on the events of October 12, 2010?_  
  
He listened to a handful of people offering vague descriptions of how, when Noah Puckerman had driven a station wagon into a Lima supermarket to steal an ATM, he hadn’t been the only one on the scene, but as no one could locate his companion and, as the fact was earnestly denied, he had been the only one convicted.  
  
Blaine’s fist clenched under the blanketing warmth of Rachel’s.  
  
 _Please describe to the jury the circumstances leading up to Mr. Hummel’s_ (the pause before the name and the contempt during it rang obvious) _arrest on November 6, 2010?_  
  
It was almost impressive, the way that a clear-cut police report could come across as contemptuous, as a wholly enlightening picture of a person.  
  
Because he knew that’s what was being established by going through criminal records and acts of impulsion and little, tiny details that were meant to sum up a character to a handful of twelve individuals that knew nothing of the defendant, yet held lives in their hands.  
  
His jaw clenched and Rachel’s thumb rubbed gently over the skin of his own.  
  
It was meant to be comforting and, in a way it was, but there was something missing from it. The weight wasn’t heavy enough, the hand neither large nor strong enough to truly comfort him.  
  
 _Describe, if you will, the scene you came upon and broke up in the men’s locker room of McKinley High on February 9, 2012?_  
  
When Blaine turned his attention to Cooper, he found his brother regarding the proceedings with the same, almost disinterested calm that he’d enveloped himself in the moment that the trial had started (perhaps even the instant in which he’d read the note Rachel had so casually dropped into his palm). He was refraining from all the little nuances that told Blaine that he was anxious and instead was lounging casually in his seat and, had Blaine a better view of his face, he would have seen the traces of a half-smile sketched along the line of his lips. Every once in a while the prosecution could look at Cooper during a particularly harsh piece of testimony, looking annoyed when the only change in Cooper’s demeanor was the thoughtful pursing of his bottom lip.  
  
Each time the prosecution relinquished their witnesses for questioning, Cooper stood with that same, fluid motion, hands rising automatically to button his jacket and walked calmly to the witness stand, addressing the witness calmly and politely. Blaine tried to remember if he’d ever had the opportunity to watch Cooper in the courtroom and he didn’t think he had. His mind kept going instantly to Gregory Peck playing Atticus Finch in the film version of _To Kill a Mockingbird_ and after perhaps three associations of that nature he realized that perhaps that was exactly what Cooper was hoping to achieve.  
  
He would approach his opponent’s witnesses calmly, his smile polite and demeanor holding nothing of the Cooper that Blaine knew on a daily basis. It was impressive, almost, the way Cooper could actually force himself to be professional given the need.  
  
He didn’t counter the prosecution’s claims necessarily, completely aware of criminal records and the fact that there was nothing in their stark, empty _fact_ that he could change or use to his advantage.  
  
With the disgruntled community service organizer he calmly questioned why Noah Puckerman, who had a record of his own that stretched miles longer than Kurt’s, would commit himself to time in a juvenile delinquent center rather than saving his own neck by turning in the person that was, if the prosecution’s claims were correct, actually responsible for the attempted heist. Behind him, Blaine could hear Puck’s disgruntled noises at a majority of the exchanges revolving around himself.  
  
With the witnesses to the incident that had first sent Kurt to juvie, Cooper seemed particularly interested not in the event itself, but to nondescript incidents preceding it. He didn’t look particularly surprised when none of the football players involved acknowledged the incidents and after a question or two he would give a brief nod as though he were satisfied—but not disappointed or deterred—and returned to his seat.  
  
The same line of question pertained to the matter at hand and it gave Blaine a twisting feeling in his stomach, like Cooper wasn’t actually doing very much to help the situation. He knew what it all was for. He knew Cooper was trying to establish motive and character, especially once it was his turn to call up witnesses and he pleasantly chatted with a pretty red-haired woman—who was revealed to be a school counselor and whose discomfort at being in the witness stand appeared to arise from its cleanliness rather than the situation she was in— as well as a burly woman with a kind face, a man with far too much product in his curly hair (which was really saying something considering Blaine’s high school years) and a tall, abrasive blonde woman in a jailhouse-striped tracksuit. Blaine listened as they all answered Cooper’s prompts to discuss Kurt’s behavior and his character; the way he’d acted prior to the death of his father; his attendance and behavior.  
  
What surprised Blaine, however, was the fact that Kurt wasn’t the primary focus of Cooper’s questioning. Instead, Cooper spent a heavy amount of time, especially when questioning the football coach and the guidance counselor, on _Karofsky_. His address was pleasant, always referring to him by his given name and the questions focusing not on Kurt’s relationship with him (which disappointed Blaine) but rather on any changes in personality and athletic or school performance that may have been witnessed throughout the time that each of the witnesses had known him.  
  
It was the apparent lack of doing anything helpful in regards to the situation that had Blaine’s gut twisting uncomfortably all the while and the jury exchanging glances in light puzzlement. Eventually Cooper stepped back and his opposition wrangled the witnesses until they admitted to incidents of angry outbursts (of which there was one that had apparently involved a Britney Spears Facebook page) and other such blemishes on character (which were apparently well researched, but few), but even then he appeared nonplussed. It all passed like a blur to Blaine, though, and the heavy weight that had been sinking his body into the hard wood of the bench supporting him from collapsing onto the ground remained, not getting any lighter.  
  
His head jerked up as the prosecutor sat down with a self-satisfied smirk and the curly-haired man was allowed to step down from the witness stand, looking uncomfortable after being forced to bring up the Britney Spears debacle. It wasn’t necessarily those actions that seemed to jolt Blaine back to the present as much as the call of Kurt’s own name and the small way that Kurt sat up in his seat for a brief moment before standing and walking straight-backed to the witness stand.  
  
He swore the oath of honestly with a low voice, expression twitching as he was asked to do so ‘so help him, God,’ and he sat down carefully in the seat allotted to him, his back straight and his expression challenging and Blaine could clearly see the person in him that was accustomed to taking residence in front of a judgmental crowd. He was perfectly poised but for the hand lying on the wood of the barrier before him, which tapped out an anxious, nervous beat.  
  
Cooper cleared his throat softly before walking back to their table and leaning against it, his hands spread out on either side of him. “Kurt,” he murmured, his voice gentle and soothing and in the silence that followed Kurt turned his gaze from the leering prosecutor to Cooper, his expression relaxing ever so slightly.  
  
“Why don’t you start by telling us how you know David?”  
  
Kurt swallowed hard, looking like he was reluctant to speak now that he was up in front of an audience, but after a moment he grunted, “School.” Cooper gave him a look and he sighed, pursing his lips. “He’s on the football team at McKinley. I’ve known him since freshman year when he and his buddies first tossed me into a dumpster.”  
  
Blaine felt a twinge of sympathy but remained silent, shifting in his seat and leaning forward, pulling his hand out of Rachel’s grasp and leaning both hands on his elbows as he studied Kurt carefully.  
  
“Has that always been your relationship with him?” Cooper asked. Kurt flashed him a frown as though he weren’t sure how to answer the question and Cooper amended it, adding, “Prior to the death of your father.”  
  
“Pretty much, yeah.”  
  
“Anything besides dumpster tossing?”  
  
Kurt swallowed and his gaze drifted behind Cooper to where the members of New Directions were watching with mixed expressions, his eyes lingering on Puck, who looked guilty and on Finn, sitting two rows ahead of them with a shorter woman with light brown hair, who looked a little uncomfortable. “General harassment, I guess. Got shoved into lockers if I passed them—him—in the hallway, catcalling.”  
  
“Was he present at the incident that triggered your previous arrest?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“How did he behave toward you following your return to McKinley?”  
  
“Same as the rest of them,” Kurt shrugged. Cooper eyed him, clearly implying that he ought to elaborate. “They all left me alone after that. Probably assumed I would snap again,” he added in a low tone, slouching slightly in his seat and staring intensely at the place where his fingers were still tapping subconsciously.  
  
“So you think they were afraid of you?”  
  
“I guess. He wasn’t, but he didn’t do anything.”  
  
Cooper nodded slowly, moving his gaze over each of the individual members of the jury before looking back at Kurt. “Tell me about November 6th.”  
  
Blaine’s gaze darted to Cooper at the sudden change in pronoun, like Cooper was trying to focus all of Kurt’s attention away from the jury, most of whose members were watching him with forced expressions of neutrality and the prosecutor that continued to leer in his direction unpleasantly.  
  
He tried to remember why the date, having nothing to do with the situation at hand as far as Blaine could tell, was so familiar.  
  
He looked back at Kurt and found the boy’s bright eyes fixed on him, his brow furrowed as though he were waiting for Blaine to look at him before he spoke. “I, errm . . . a couple of weeks before that, he started . . . he didn’t start _doing_ anything,” Kurt started in a low mutter, raising his voice when he felt Cooper give him a look. “Just, looking at me differently and I didn’t really pay much attention to it . . . they kept leaving me alone, same as before, which was what I wanted so there wasn’t really any reason to . . .” he trailed off as though he felt there was no explanation needed, his eyes trained on Blaine and sparkling as though he were the only one that needed to hear any justifications. “But that day I was just . . . walking down the hallway and he slushied me.”  
  
Blaine’s brow furrowed, something warm starting to bubble in his chest as Cooper prompted calmly, “Can you elaborate on that for the jury, Kurt?”  
  
Kurt blinked, as though he’d forgotten that McKinley High School didn’t practice the common preaching of the world. “He threw one of those gas station Icees in my face. Standard McKinley bullying practices.”  
  
Blaine felt his breath catch as he stared at Kurt, the boy’s eyes mere pinpricks of light because of the space between them but he could still see them glistening. The date was familiar now, images flashing before his vision and he felt his blood run cold.  
  
Speckles of red along the white of a cotton shirt. Red liquid melting and snaking it’s way in droplets down the side of a boy’s face.  
  
“What happened after that?”  
  
The bob of Kurt’s throat when he swallowed was mesmerizing. There was something painfully haunting about his entire countenance, like something sketched out and rehearsed and taken solid form, a piece of art that was later taken to by an eraser and forced to fade out.  
  
“I . . .” he started and his voice was rough, like he’d practiced and he’d said it before but that didn’t make it much less painful. “I don’t know, I . . . I just sort of stood there for a moment because it had really . . . surprised me and then I just . . . I don’t know, I _snapped_ and I ran after him into the men’s locker room and I . . .” he trailed off, his chest rising and falling with a visibly forced evenness and his mouth flattening into a thin line.  
  
Cooper paused, waiting for him to calm himself before murmuring softly. “Did you want to hurt him?”  
  
There was a murmur that ran through the crowd, the jury shifting as they tried to figure out what Cooper was tending to, what strange interaction had happened months ago between the same two boys involved that day.  
  
Kurt’s eyes widened and he leaned forward, turning his gaze from Blaine to Cooper as though Cooper was challenging him, drawing him into a defensive position. “I never wanted to hurt anyone,” he retorted, almost angrily, as though it had been something he’d repeated to Cooper numerous times and Cooper was acting like he didn’t believe him.  
  
“Not even a little?” Cooper murmured, and Blaine’s eyes widened and his fist curled, the sudden urge to punch his brother because this could not possibly be helping. “Surely, it would have been justified.”  
  
Kurt’s face fell a little and he stared at Cooper almost pleadingly. Cooper nodded, his face neutral and Kurt sighed, running a hand through his hair and sitting back in his seat. “I did want to get even,” he murmured quietly, his eyes trained on the hand that had been tapping out melodies on the wood in front of him, now still. “I . . . didn’t want to lose myself but I wanted to make him hurt, like he’d made me hurt all those years. But I . . . not enough to let myself do it.”  
  
Cooper nodded. “What happened in the locker room?”  
  
Kurt swallowed hard. “I . . . I followed him and just started yelling at him. I don’t . . . I don’t even know what I was saying but everything that I’d kept bottled up just came out and then he . . . I . . .” the flat line of Kurt’s lips reappeared and he closed his eyes, his lips moving soundlessly like in a prayer before he muttered, the calm and strength in his voice forced, “He kissed me.”  
  
Blaine thought there might have been an explosion within the courtroom but he couldn’t be certain, the roar in his ears drowning out anything around him. He simply stared at Kurt, his entire body numb as the prosecutor leapt out of his seat, knocking his chair over and yelling some sort of protest about slander and the judge banged her gavel to try to restore order. On the juror’s stand there was more muttering than yelling and the man in the maroon jacket was sitting calmly with a pained expression on his face.  
  
It came to Blaine in a flood, the hurt boy on the bench in the snow, the one sitting on a window seat with his fingers pressed against his lips and a haunted look on his face and there was a rush of adrenaline like electricity through his entire body and he’d almost jolted to his feet but for Rachel pulling him back and whispering things that he couldn’t hear.  
  
Cooper sat back calmly, his gaze focused on Kurt as the chaos was slowly calmed and the banging of the judge’s gavel became audible over the crowd and the shouts of the prosecutor.  
  
“Order! I will have order in this courtroom! Mr. Richardson, objection overruled and you _will_ take a seat! Mr. Anderson, if you will continue questioning the defendant while the rest of you _remain silent_.”  
  
Every muscle in Blaine’s body was alternating between being completely numb, as though every nerve had simultaneously died and jolting with adrenaline, the sensations sending him into a dizzying spin that ended with a hollow feeling in his chest.  
  
Cooper’s shoulders shook suddenly as his gaze fell from Kurt and he chuckled softly to himself as the outbreak calmed and an eerie silence fell upon the courtroom, so silent that Blaine could hear Cooper breathing.  
  
“What happened after David Karofsky kissed you?” Cooper continued after a moment of painstaking silence, ignoring the disgruntled huff from the prosecution table.  
  
Kurt shook his head. “I . . . I pushed him away and . . . I don’t know, I just _left_ . . . I couldn’t think of anything to do but to get out of there.”  
  
“Where did you go?”  
  
“Columbus.”  
  
“Why there?”  
  
Kurt hesitated, his eyes flickering to Blaine and his breath catching, every inch of his face softening slightly as they locked eyes. “I don’t know. It’s all a bit of a blur. I think . . . I was just trying not to break and I . . . it was the one place I could think of where I’d feel safe,” he murmured in a hushed tone, his eyes sparkling a pale blue and holding Blaine’s gaze.  
  
Cooper’s head turned to the side a little bit, as though he were tempted to look back at Blaine but thought better of it. He cleared his throat softly, pushing off from the table and pacing slowly in front of the juror’s table. The motion caught Kurt’s eye and the boy looked up, his bottom lip disappearing between his teeth.  
  
“Tell me what happened on February 9th, Kurt.”  
  
The spot in the center of Blaine’s chest felt hollow and cold when Kurt turned his gaze away and started speaking in a distant tone. “I . . . had to stay after school for detention and as I was leaving I passed by the men’s locker room and a hand reached out to pull me in and slammed me against the wall inside the door. I . . . it was him—Karofsky—and he just . . . he’d been harassing me for weeks, more so since Christmas break, but it’s like he was waiting for an opportunity to get me alone. And I just . . . he was so _angry_ about something and he kept yelling, asking if I’d . . .” Kurt’s voice caught and he snapped his mouth shut, swallowing hard and narrowing his eyes at the wood of the barrier surrounding the witness’s stand. “If I’d told my little fuck buddy. If I remembered what he said he’d do to me if I told anyone he kissed me.”  
  
“What did he say he would do?”  
  
Kurt muttered something, his voice thick and inaudible with a sudden emotion and Blaine recognized it all of a sudden. Recognized the stiffness of his shoulders and the look on his face, pained and afraid, like it had been in the parking lot after their first date. He cleared his throat and looked up at Cooper with blazing eyes. “He said he’d kill me.”  
  
The outbreak throughout the courtroom that time was different from when Kurt had proclaimed that Karofsky had kissed him. There was a tide of muttering that rose and fell like the crests of waves in an ocean. Some of the jury looked stunned, even the ones that had seemed prepared to convict Kurt on the spot. On the other side of the room, the prosecutor was watching Kurt silently with narrowed eyes and a sour look on his face while the persons occupying the rows of benches behind him looked at each other apprehensively, as though there was something in the statement and in their connection to the plaintiff that implied that the accusation wasn’t all too far-fetched after all.  
  
Blaine, on the other hand, could feel the hollow feeling in his chest filling with a boiling heat, one that burned through every muscle of his body as though he’d been set on fire, the war drum of his pulse so strong he was surprised no one else could hear it. It was an anger that burned deep, curling his hands into hard fists but rooting him in place. Over the roar of rushing blood he could just barely hear Kurt as he continued speaking, his voice low but loud enough to fill the entire room like a shout.  
  
“Then he said . . . he told me that . . . who was I to have a fuck buddy, thinking I could just act like it was all _normal_ and he just . . . he punched the wall next to my head so hard the rack of exercise balls next to it shook. And suddenly he just . . . he was so close and I could just . . . feel his breath on my neck and he just pressed his entire body against mine and . . . and he said something like, ‘Who do you think you are, fucking random people? If you’re so desperate to get on your knees, then do it here,’ and he . . . he . . .” Kurt’s voice broke suddenly and his face screwed up as he stopped talking and leaned back in his seat, his eyes closed and the palms of his hands cupped over his face, almost like a prayer. The silence in the room was deafening and no one made a move to say anything as it pressed down around them, heavy and deadly. Kurt inhaled, long and deep, one hand falling away from his face but one remaining to rub his nose hard before he spoke again. “He just pressed me further against the wall and I could . . . feel him and I tried to push him away but he just grabbed my shoulders and then pinned my hands to my side and I . . .” Kurt spoke quickly, as though the faster he talked the less painful it would be, but he stumbled over his own words in his haste. “And then . . . I don’t know I just . . . I could feel him and he kept trying to kiss me and I just . . . I _snapped_ and just . . . I fought back . . .” he finished lamely, his lips flattening again into so thin a line that Blaine could barely see it.  
  
He tried to stand, to do something, anything with the heat in his blood but Rachel was leaning against him, her arms wrapped around his nearest arm in a hug, her eyes wide and tearful and he fell back against the hard wood. His breathing was harsh, sucked in and let out without mercy but still his lungs burned and his head spun as though he were oxygen deprived.  
  
The only calm person in the room was Cooper, but as Kurt broke off speaking his face softened and his eyes grew impeccably sad. He stared at Kurt until Kurt again looked at him and murmured, as quietly and gently as possible, “Would you classify what went on between yourself and David Karofsky in the McKinley High School men’s locker room as sexual assault?”  
  
The entire room froze as though petrified at the phrasing of the word and Kurt’s entire face had paled, as though Cooper had thrown around the term countless times before but that didn’t make it any less painful, any less real. Like it didn’t erase the adrenaline or the spine-crippling fear or the panic that both inflamed the blood into action and froze it into submission. The breath he inhaled was shaky, but when he spoke, it was one word and it was stronger than Blaine had ever heard from him.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
And that was when all the lines blurred.  
  
“Blaine!”  
  
He thought that it was Rachel yelling his name, but he couldn’t be certain. He could feel all eyes on him but the only gaze that barely registered was Kurt’s, flying up to him as he moved down the length of his row, the distance seeming to stretch endlessly before him and down the middle aisle, ignoring calls to order, ignoring the way the woman next to Finn shifted to watch him as he passed, the shocked looks on the members of New Directions.  
  
All he could feel was a sudden rage to punch something, electricity mixing with numbness in every fiber, every cell of his body. He hadn’t felt that way since he’d fought with his father, right after getting released from the hospital after the Sadie Hawkins debacle. His mind raced and it channeled into his muscles, propelling him angrily out of the courtroom where he could _do_ something rather than having to sit quietly by and listen to the reasons that his boyfriend was trying so desperately to escape, the reasons why he was so scared whenever there was an opportunity for a run-in with Dave Karofsky.  
  
In the hallway, he heard the doors slam behind him. He didn’t see the way Kurt instantly rose out of his seat, eyes distraught and wet and how he froze the minute Cooper’s had flew up automatically to stop him, his eyes trained on Blaine with a worried crinkle in his brow.  
  
All he could think about was exactly what he would do to Karofsky the next time he saw him.


	27. Chapter 27

“Blaine! Blaine, wait!”  
  
He was midway down the hall when the clicking of heels caught up to him and there was a blur of blonde in front of him, blocking his path. He made to step aside, mind still pushing his body toward one goal, but the slim body before him moved easily with his own, thin, neatly manicured hands rising up to rest on his shoulders.  
  
“Blaine!”  
  
“I’m going to kill him!” he growled, trying to push his way past her but she stood firm, surprisingly strong. “I swear to God, when I find him I’m going to rip him limb from limb!”  
  
“No, you’re not,” she replied calmly, a hand falling to the center of his chest. “Blaine—”  
  
“Let me go, Quinn!” he growled, turning his gaze to her face for the first time.  
  
She raised a thin eyebrow at him, her face molded into a picture of stoic patience, though her eyes glowed slightly with sympathy. He was struck by how pretty she was, not having had much of an opportunity to do so the last time they’d been in the same room. He could feel his anger being dulled by something like numb resignment. “Let me go, Quinn.”  
  
She appraised him with a critical eye. “No, Blaine.”  
  
“Quinn—”  
  
“Please, hobbit, let’s get the baby gay off first before we worry about getting you off a murder charge.”  
  
Blaine blinked, his brow furrowing as he glanced over his shoulder to where Santana was leaning against the wall near the doors through which he’d burst in his rush of adrenaline, her legs long and dark below the hem of her dress, her expression a far more intense one than Quinn’s.  
  
He shook his head, the roar of the creature in his chest calming, but still filling him with a desperate, restless energy. “I just . . . this is so full of _shit_ , I can’t just sit by and—”  
  
Santana opened her mouth to say something—he could just see her forming a scathing, witty retort—but it was Quinn who spoke first and her voice was low and smooth like a lullaby. “Life’s not fair, I know—oh, don’t give me that!” she said, smacking him on the arm as he quite obviously resisted the urge to scoff at her words. “None of those thoughts about how I’m white and pretty and privileged and I have no idea what either of you could be going through, because I’m pretty sure that I’ve been through more shit than you have.” She eyed him, her gaze a challenge as though she were waiting for him to contradict her, but something in the defiant gleam of her eyes kept him silent. “I know how hard it must be for you to force yourself to sit quietly and do nothing, but I also know that the last thing you want to do is make things worse.”  
  
He gazed at her, utterly perplexed before speaking, his voice barely above a whisper. “How is it that we’ve never even been properly introduced and you’re standing there right now, knowing me as well as you do?”  
  
She laughed, soft and pretty like the ringing of a tiny bell and held out her hand casually. “Quinn Fabray, and I’m quite talented like that,” she informed him with a light smile breaking through her calm exterior.  
  
Blaine cracked a smile at this, eyeing her curiously, but their small moment was interrupted by a groan from Santana, who rolled her eyes at the scene and stepped back toward the door to the courtroom. “As freakin’ charming as this is, let’s get back inside before I miss the showdown between Kurt and that asshole of a prosecutor.”  
  
At her words, Blaine’s shoulders stiffened again, his eyes drifting to the door, where the light press of Santana’s weighted had eased it open a crack, revealing a sliver of the room inside and he suddenly felt the contents of his stomach shift, the ground under his feet tilting and he shook his head, walking toward her but collapsing on the bench near the door, leaning his head back against the wall as he tried to keep the room from spinning.  
  
“You go,” he muttered, his eyes closed. “I can’t be in there right now.”  
  
There was a surprising silence from Santana, with no witty comebacks or attempts to tell him to suck it up and stop being an idiot, but instead she stood quiet, watching as Quinn settled down next to him and crossed her legs neatly with a murmur of, “I’ll wait out here with you.”  
  
Blaine glanced at her to find her staring pointedly at Santana, who rolled her eyes and flicked her long, raven locks over her shoulders, not making to close the door but also not moving further inside the adjacent room. She simply stood where she was, eyes watching Blaine without a particularly discernible expression, her head leaning toward the crack in the doorway that the pressure of her hand was still forming. He could hear the murmur of Cooper’s voice inside without focusing, but individual words were too difficult to discern and somehow, just its unintelligible presence was comforting enough.  
  
They must have been sitting there for only a short moment in their silence, Santana still in the doorway and Blaine and Quinn shoulder to shoulder on the bench, when the doors down the hall burst open and Lexi rushed in, a sheet of paper in her hands. She slowed down when she saw the three of them, the bright grin on her face flickering a little and she slowed down her footsteps, stopping in front of them and looking back and forth between their faces in puzzlement.  
  
“They haven’t sent the jury in to deliberate yet, have they?” she asked, eyes focusing on Blaine and he was surprised by the warm familiarity in them, mixed with her joy from moments ago.  
  
“Not that I know of,” Blaine started as Santana angled her head at the door again and replied with a curt, “Nope.”  
  
At both the negatives Lexi’s eyes lit up again and she grinned perkily at Blaine, looking like more of an excited schoolgirl than a lawyer older than his brother and he couldn’t help but crack a smile in her direction, her energy contagious.  
  
“Awesome,” she grinned, starting to move toward the door.  
  
“What is?” Quinn murmured, her brow furrowed in confusion as Santana stepped back with a raised eyebrow to let Lexi pass her.  
  
The auburn-haired woman paused again, her hand on the door and her sparkling eyes directed at Blaine, as though he were the only one that she cared heard her news. “Looks like our friend David Karofsky has woken up,” she answered casually with a wink before sweeping into the room, her entrance dramatic and alerting everyone of her presence.  
  
The door closed with a click and Santana simply stood staring at it for a beat before her gaze flickered to Quinn, who pursed her lips with astounding grace, like she was trying not to get too excited before she could fully comprehend what that information meant.  
  
For a brief instant none of them moved, the silence filling the hall like something haunted, the kind that left them on edge and itching within the confines of their skin. It was Quinn who broke it, dropping it like a delicate thing that would shatter once it hit the ground. “Is that . . . that’s good isn’t it?” she asked softly, the pink of her tongue darting out to wet her lips before she looked at Santana briefly, her gaze coming to a rest on Blaine.  
  
Blaine frowned a little, trying to figure out if it was. If it was good that Karofsky wasn’t going to kick the bucket—he had no sympathy for the man right now and couldn’t be bothered to phrase things delicately in his head—or bad because they could halt everything until he testified. But then there was the gleam in her eyes, the bounce in her step like a little girl in a candy store and he couldn’t help but smile again, couldn’t help but raise his eyes to meet Quinn’s with a new sort of light radiating from them.  
  
“I think it is.”  


* * *

  
He wasn’t sure how long they sat out in the hall as the trial continued on inside. He really ought to have, judging from the time he sat motionless, his mind racing and his eyes fixed at the clock on the opposite wall as the second hand crawled by, resting on each tick for what seemed an eternity. He could feel a headache building and he closed his eyes, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, his face in the cupped palms of his hands as time slowly moved around him.  
  
There was a part of him that itched to get back in there, the gripping anger that came with hearing of injustice possibly more welcomed than having to spend any more time in ignorance, but even as he was making up his mind the doors opened and people started leaking out, discussing things in low murmurs. It wasn’t everyone in the courtroom, mainly people from the side of the prosecution, but after a handful of them Rachel danced easily through their masses, her eyes meeting Blaine’s as she scurried over.  
  
“What’s going on?” he asked, rising automatically to meet her.  
  
“They sent the jury back to deliberate,” she replied, licking her lips as she approached. She stopped in front of him, glancing up at him with a crinkle of worry and concern in her brow. “Are you okay? I was worried when you didn’t come back in.”  
  
He shook his head, scratching absentmindedly at his temple when he found that he needed something to do with his hands, something that would keep his simmering restless energy at bay. “Fine, I’m fine . . . I just . . . sorry, I just freaked out a little and I didn’t think I could go back in there.”  
  
Rachel’s lips flattened into a long, thin line, her eyes crinkling with perfect sympathy. She glanced down at Quinn, who met her eye briefly before looking back down at her nails. “You didn’t know any of that stuff, did you?” she said finally, looking sad.  
  
“Did you?”  
  
“Not really,” she shrugged. “I mean, I knew Karofsky was giving him a hard time but I didn’t know any details.”  
  
Blaine shook his head. “Me neither,” he murmured softly. He grimaced and wrung his hands together again, another jolt of restless anger flickering through him. “God, I _should_ have,” he muttered, swearing softly under his breath. “I should have pieced it together, I—”  
  
“Blaine, this isn’t your fault,” Quinn said sharply behind him, rising to her feet, her shoulder again brushing against his as she neared him. “You can’t blame yourself.”  
  
Rachel nodded in agreement, her eyes dark and anxious and he tried to shake that feeling from his shoulders. Because they were right, _of course_ they were but that didn’t change the fact that there had been so many pieces dangled in front of him but he’d still been unable to reach out and piece them together. Not even when Kurt had given in and opened his heart to Blaine.  
  
He cleared his throat. This wasn’t about him. He didn’t need any of them worrying about _him_ when there were more important things to worry about. When there were greater losses to be suffered if things fell apart this time. There was no part of him that wanted to be selfish with the care of people that barely knew him, but loved him because they could see that he cared about Kurt as much as they did. That Kurt had let his guard down and allowed himself to love him back.  
  
He dropped back down in his seat and Rachel and Quinn followed suit, settling themselves down on the bench on either side of him, Rachel again scooping his hand up into her own and leaning against him, rubbing her thumb delicately over the curve of his own, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Quinn was a bit more reserved, body angled so that she was partially facing him but she leaned back against the wall, her bangs falling into her eyes and her knee just barely touching Blaine’s.  
When he forced himself to focus, he realized that Rachel was busy recounting the details that they’d missed from the trial and his hand automatically clenched around hers, his grip so tight that she stuttered slightly over her own words.  
“And the prosecutor was _awful_ to Kurt, I could barely restrain myself from giving him a piece of my mind. He kept on going on and on, making these comments like Kurt was an idiot for defending himself and ‘violence is never the answer’ and it was just the most ridiculous thing in the world and you could tell that Cooper was afraid that Kurt was going to just lose it. Just, some of the things he was saying were so absurdly bigoted I’m surprised we all didn’t rise up fighting to smack some sense into him. But, God, there was a moment where he was insinuating that well, Kurt is gay and so he must enjoy sex and so he must have beaten up Karofsky for a different reason because if Karofsky was trying to have sex with him he wouldn’t turn it down and Kurt just snapped. Like, you could tell that he was literally trying to refrain from losing his cool because Cooper had warned him about it, but during that comment he just completely cracked down on him. Started yelling about what the hell kind of justice they were practicing if they were saying that he should just allow himself to be raped because he was gay and that must mean he likes sex in any way shape or form. That he was the one that was wrong for trying to defend himself from being violated, from something so utterly demeaning, like he wasn’t as human as the rest of them and . . . It was horrible, I thought he was going to cry. You could tell the moment he started yelling that Cooper wanted to stop him but he just let him go on and everyone in the room just felt so _awkward_ , especially on the side of the prosecution. I mean, honestly, if after that they’re sitting in the jury room still wanting to convict him they’ve all got some _serious_ issues. But one of my dads is serving jury duty today, thank _God_ , and he once had an hour long flip-out at someone at the grocery store over _Starlight Express_ of all things—though really if you think it’s anything but a joke you deserve the smack down that he’ll give you—so if anyone can convince them to let Kurt off it’ll be—”  
  
“Rachel, please stop talking,” Blaine murmured wearily, his fist unclenching and pulling away from her grasp as he leaned back against the hardness of the wall, hands rising to his face and the pressure of the heels of his palms against his eyes working to calm him somewhat, to block out as much of his surroundings as he could. Next to him, Rachel’s mouth instantly clamped shut and she had the decency to look a little bit guilty at upsetting Blaine again.  
  
He was suddenly glad that he hadn’t gone back in the room. Hearing Rachel recount was probably the most diluted way that he could have experienced that portion of the trial, but even that stung through him, stabbing straight through his center like a sword, pinning him to the wall behind him and leaving him to bleed dry. He didn’t think he could have taken sitting and watching Kurt breaking down.  
  
He realized then that he’d never seen Kurt cry. That even in his most vulnerable moments he was all determined strength.  


* * *

  
“They’re in there a long time. . . . I can’t tell if that’s good or bad.”  
  
“I guess it depends on the jury . . . if there are enough people on our side, they could be working on convincing those against us to see their side.”  
  
“Even if there’s one person . . .”  
  
Blaine sighed, starting to rub his eyes rather than point out that the length of jury deliberation didn’t necessarily mean anything in regards to the outcome, but before he could speak Lexi poked her head out into the hall, glancing around at all the various people scattered there and announced loudly, “The jury is coming back in.”  
  
Rachel sucked in a quick breath and Quinn’s eyes widened. Blaine simply swallowed hard as Quinn rose quickly to her feet next to him, her gaze flickering anxiously down at him when he didn’t make any motion whatsoever. “Are you coming in, Blaine?”  
  
Was he? He simply felt himself rooted in place, his stomach churning dangerously but his throat closing up so that the contents of his stomach could do nothing more than swirl and build inside of him. He shook his head quickly, leaning over his lap and pressing his face into his hands again. “I don’t know if I can . . .” he muttered. “I just . . . should give the jury a running start in case things go south,” he joked but his voice was rough and he knew they could hear it.  
  
Quinn didn’t say anything but Blaine could sense Rachel dropping back down into her seat as the hallway emptied back into the courtroom, one of her arms wrapping around his and her head finding what had apparently become its place on his shoulder.  
  
“I’ll wait with you,” she murmured quietly near his ear.  
  
He was surprised by how short the wait was, really, before someone emerged from the room to tell them the news. It felt like ages, like the slow, desperate crawl through molasses when one was being chased by something monstrous not confined by the laws of viscosity. He felt as though the world had gone quiet around him except for the headache-inducing hum in his ear, like white noise on a television set that had gone dead. He was lost in it, not hearing anything until Rachel let go of his arm and leapt to her feet when the doors to the courtroom burst open and her boyfriend bounded out.  
  
The first thing Blaine saw was his expression and it was like the chill around his heart shattered. Because Blaine knew very little about Finn, but if there was one thing he knew for certain was that, while perhaps not the brightest of Kurt’s acquaintances, Finn was the one that never had any trouble displaying every one of his emotions straight on his face.  
  
And even as he tripped over his words trying to explain what had happened, the smile on his face was enough explanation of the situation.  
  
“I don’t know exactly what’s up because they had a . . . umm . . . whatever it’s called when the jury can’t agree . . .”  
  
“A hung jury,” Rachel supplied quickly, shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to another at a steady beat, appearing to be torn between looking anxious and impatient.  
  
“Yeah, that, and my mom said that usually means that unless the judge overrules it and passes judgment, the trial basically gets postponed . . . .”  
  
“So what happened?” Rachel prompted the instant Finn stopped talking, his face scrunched up in thought as he pondered this fact. “Has it been held off or—”  
  
“Oh, she overruled it,” Finn said simply, looking between them as though he expected everything to be clear then, puzzlement flooding his face when he found his girlfriend staring at him with just as much eager confusion as she’d had when he’d come out to tell them what happened.  
  
“But what did she rule, then?”  
  
“She ruled for us . . .” Blaine said quietly, not quite daring to believe it, and Rachel jumped, as though she’d forgotten Blaine was there, her eyes widening as she stared at Finn for confirmation.  
  
Finn’s eyes lit up further, a feat that Blaine hadn’t thought possible. “Yeah! She said something about . . . umm . . . hold on . . . something about how the battery was, like, super serious but after hearing both sides of testimony it was clear that it was justified or something . . . anyway, she said that the defendant—that’s Kurt, right?—wasn’t going to jail because the evidence was enough to prove it was self defense but that she was going to place him under lenient house arrest because no society should condone any violence going totally unpunished. But it’s only for, like, a couple of months and Puck said being under house arrest basically just means that he’s going to have to wear one of those crazy ankle bracelet things until graduation but—”  
  
He cut off talking with a grunt as Rachel squealed loudly and flung her arms around his neck, almost knocking him over despite how tiny she was compared to him. He laughed, wrapping his arms around her waist as she squeaked happily into the skin of his shoulder before pulling back, her sparkling eyes searching for Blaine.  
  
“Did you hear that, Blaine? We—” she started but he was gone before she could tackle him with her embrace, dodging around them and practically sprinting into the courtroom.  
  
He didn’t know when it had emptied, when all those people had filed past him and Rachel and Finn, but there was a strange calm in the room. The other members of New Directions were still clustered in their little area, chatting happily now that the trial was over, but their gazes flew to him instantly. He ignored them, his footsteps echoing on the floor, bouncing off the walls like the energy that had somehow filled him. It was too good, too good to be true but the instant Kurt looked up from where he, the judge, Cooper and Finn’s mom were clustered around a table, he knew it was. Knew from the softness of Kurt’s expression and the warm glow of his eyes.  
  
From the smile that he couldn’t help breaking out over his face and the way he leaned away from whatever was being discussed, his shoulder knocking against Cooper’s as he grinned at Blaine.  
  
Blaine barely noticed Cooper turning to look at what had distracted Kurt, his eyes landing on Blaine before he rolled them and murmured something to Kurt, something that must have been a release because the instant he said it Kurt all but leapt away from him, taking three quick steps to the barrier between the audience and the main floor of the courtroom and past it until he was standing directly in front of Blaine.  
  
Neither of them moved, both trying hard to control the breaths that were escaping them in short little bursts, like the adrenaline pounding both of their hearts. It was as though a layer had fallen away from Kurt and he stood before Blaine a little taller, the light in his eyes a little brighter and his face unable to hide the mix of emotions that was exploding within him.  
  
“So,” Blaine started, his voice rough and a little breathless at the picture of the boy standing before him, still weighted down by everything that had happened to him in the past, but looking a little freer nonetheless. “I hear you’re not going to jail, then.”  
  
“Apparently I’m going to be stuck in Lima for 3 months. Given my options, I think I’d prefer jail,” Kurt retorted quickly, but his hand curled into a light fist that rose up quickly to cover his mouth as he broke out into a grin, his eyes shining more than sunlight reflected off a calm sea on a sunny day. Blaine bit back his grin as Kurt’s shoulders shook as he tried to keep from laughing but in the end he couldn’t hold it back and without warning he barreled into Blaine, sending him stumbling back several paces with a laugh, allowing his joy to spill out as his arms wrapped around Kurt, holding him tight against his chest, hearts pounding so hard it felt as though the room around them were shaking.  
  
Blaine laughed into the crook of Kurt’s neck, his arms bracing Kurt’s shoulders as they trembled with a rush of breathless relief, the boy’s face buried in the space between his arms and Blaine’s neck, his breath warm and infusing Blaine with a strange sense of life.  
  
“I love you.”  
  
Blaine’s laughter got cut off in a rough choking noise that only seemed to make Kurt laugh harder against his shoulder before pulling away, staring in slight shock at Kurt, whose expression dissolved into one that was slightly anxious, his eyes bright as he seemed to await an end to the good news of the day.  
  
There was such openness in the expression that Blaine almost couldn’t resist the urge to roll his eyes even as his chest swelled like hot air being blown into a balloon, lifting his spirit up through the roof of the building and to the blue sky above.  
  
He shook his head, not fighting his own affectionate smile as he raised a hand delicately to Kurt’s cheek, running his hands along the smooth skin there, marveling at the way Kurt’s lips parted at the contact and his chest rose gracefully under the tight stretch of his shirt. “I love you too, you idiot,” he murmured quietly as Kurt blinked in slight surprise before narrowing his eyes playfully.  
  
He opened his mouth to speak when there was a hand on his shoulder and the woman that had been identified as Finn’s mom appeared by his side, smiling at the two of them with such kindness that Blaine couldn’t help but be wholly astounded. He didn’t know what he’d imagined from the woman—it wasn’t like Kurt had told him any sort of monstrosities about her, but somehow he couldn’t have imagined such a pleasant seeming woman as someone that Kurt could have walked away from, especially when it had seemed like kindness was the one thing that he had needed at that time.  
  
“Kurt, honey,” she started, and Blaine almost expected Kurt to bristle at the term of endearment, but instead the boy gave him a weak smile before glancing at her, his eyes shining with slight familiarity, but also with the smallest sensation of awkwardness, as though he were remembering their last encounter as not being a pleasant one, “If you’re certain about coming to stay with me, we should finalize things with your . . .” she paused suddenly, biting her lip and her eyes filling with something akin to pity.  
  
“Ankle monitor?” Kurt supplied. To Blaine’s surprise, he sounded more grateful than resentful of the punishment. “You can say it, Carole, it’s not going to wound me or anything. Better than the alternative.”  
  
She exhaled in relief, her shoulders loosening as she nodded before glancing with a smile at Blaine. “I’m guessing you’re Blaine?” she asked kindly, extending a hand. “Your brother has mentioned you briefly. I’m Carole . . .”  
  
“Finn’s mom,” Blaine acknowledged, taking her hand and marveling at how firm her grip was.  
  
She looked surprised that he knew who she was, but the fact seemed to please her, as though she realized that it had come into his possession from Kurt rather than Cooper. She turned back to Kurt. “Kurt?”  
  
Kurt opened his mouth and for the first time since Blaine had reentered the courtroom, he saw something saddening in Kurt’s eyes, as though he were torn between his own decisions. He looked between Carole and Blaine as though he were trying to decide what it was that he wanted more and when he finally settled on gazing at her and spoke, his voice was laced with so much apology that it was almost physically wounding to Blaine. Like he was remembering the way he’d reacted the last time the woman before him had reached out a hand to him, had offered to take him in after they both lost someone vitally important to them. “Actually, Carole, I—”  
  
“If you’d like to live on your own, that’s completely fine,” she said instantly, her cheeks flushing and Blaine could feel a physical pain in his chest at the situation. “I think they just want to ensure some sort of legal guardianship while you’re under house arrest but if you don’t want to live with us—”  
  
“I don’t want to go back to that apartment,” Kurt murmured quietly, his voice barely audible over her ramble.  
  
“I . . . oh . . .”  
  
“I, umm . . .” Kurt frowned, furrowing his brow, the pink of his tongue poking out from between his lips. “I was actually just . . . maybe hoping to spend the night at your place?” he muttered quickly, glancing at Blaine out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Blaine was sure he looked as surprised as Carole at the request, but his only reaction was to exhale, his heart pounding in his chest. “I . . .” he started, finding himself at a loss for words. Kurt’s brow furrowed slightly but he didn’t move until Blaine had spoken. “I would have absolutely no problem with that,” he proclaimed softly, marveling at the way Kurt’s eyes lit up.  
  
“I’ll come back to Lima tomorrow,” Kurt said quickly, glancing toward the table of lawyers and judges to see Cooper observing the conversation with a curious look on his face. “I just . . . I . . .”  
  
“I understand, honey,” Carole reassured him, her voice warm and smooth. She smiled almost thankfully at Blaine before pulling Kurt back toward the group to discuss the option.  
  
Blaine watched as they spoke with the group, Cooper waving his hands as he spoke and saying something that made a handful of people laugh and Kurt cough awkwardly, glancing back at Blaine as though to reassure himself that Blaine would remain where he was throughout the proceeding. Blaine smiled at him, sitting down in one of the rows nearest to him and waiting until they finished conversing and Cooper, Carole and Kurt made their way back to him.  
  
“You missed my closing speech, squirt,” Cooper called out to him reprimandingly, his voice mockingly stern and his eyes twinkling with affection for his brother. “I’m pretty sure it rivaled some of the shit I came up with during my want-to-be-Hollywood-star days.”  
  
“Jesus, if that’s true, I’m surprised you managed to pull this thing off at all,” Blaine countered smoothly, rolling his eyes when Kurt frowned at him questioningly.  
  
He winced as Cooper smacked him playfully, raising a finger and jabbing it fiercely in front of Blaine’s face. “ _You_ should be nice to me or I can go right back and retract all my arguments in favor of your boyfriends 24-hour leave of absence from his punishment.”  
  
Blaine could feel his eyes lighting up even as he tried to maintain a sense of mock seriousness when messing with Cooper. But his gaze flickered to Kurt, who looked like he was trying to maintain his own rough persona despite the grin that was forcing it’s way through the contours of his mouth. “Twenty-four hours?”  
  
Cooper nodded. “Yup. I have to keep him under my supervision to make sure he’s not going to split—”  
  
“I’m not going to—” Kurt started, sounding annoyed, but Cooper waved him off.  
  
“Well, obviously, not when you’ve got a boyfriend as good-looking as my baby brother, though if you guys could keep it do . . . . down . . .” Cooper trailed off as Carole coughed lightly, eyeing him as only a mother could.  
  
“Umm . . . Yes . . . Anyway, tomorrow at five they want to snap on your pretty little piece of jewelry, so you’re more or less free until then.”  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes and looked very seriously at Kurt. “We’re never free if my brother is around,” he lamented sadly, ducking away from Cooper with a smirk and starting their exit out of the building. “Also, I applaud you for not pointing the whole time I was in the room, because I never would have been able to take you seriously.”  
  
“Stop talking about that!” Cooper groaned.  
  
Blaine smirked and turned gracefully on his heel, walking backwards out the building. “Are you talking to me, Coop?” he inquired mockingly. “Because I can’t tell if you’re talking to me if you don’t point your finger!” The end of the sentence was finished at a shout as Cooper made a disgruntled noise and started running after him out of the building, his lawyerly demeanor completely forgotten as the seriousness of the trial fell back into the past.  
  
They made it to the car drawing a surprisingly small amount of attention to themselves and it was only with the solid metal of the vehicle between himself and his brother that Blaine realized that Kurt and Carole were walking slowly behind them, their amusement at their antics fading into something somber of conversation. Kurt had stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket as they stepped out into the early February sunshine, his head bowed as he spoke to her in a low voice.  
  
They’d paused near the top of the steps leading up to the courthouse, Kurt turning to face her, his bangs falling over his eyes and making him look so, so young again. His hand fiddled with something in his pocket and he only looked up when he withdrew it, holding the small box between two fingers and offering it to her with something of an apology shining in his expression.  
  
Blaine could see her eyes furrowing in confusion and wondered if she knew. If Finn had ever told her about the ring, but even as Kurt looked like he was trying to apologize to her for things that maybe Blaine didn’t even know about, she swept him into a tight hug, his body stiffening in shock for a beat before his arms wound their way around her back, simply resting there, like he was trying to adjust to the sensation again.  
  
He met Blaine’s eyes over Carole’s shoulder and smiled.  


* * *

  
They’d barely crossed the threshold of his room when Blaine found himself against the wall with Kurt’s lips on his, the long line of his body against his and he couldn’t help but groan. His hands scrambled over Kurt’s body frantically, the realization that he’d been deprived of the ability to touch for weeks hitting him like a freight train.  
  
Kurt swiped his tongue into Blaine’s mouth, the movement needy and desperate as his hands dug little bruises into Blaine’s hips through the fabric of his jeans, pulling him closer.  
  
“So as much as I hate to interrupt, where do you want me, little brother?”  
  
Kurt pulled away with an annoyed noise, his forehead dropping onto Blaine’s shoulder. Blaine leaned his head back, trying to catch his breath, before glancing at Cooper, who was leaning casually against the doorframe with a light smirk on his face.  
  
“Guest room.”  
  
When Cooper raised an eyebrow, Blaine rolled his eyes and added, “I’ll be there in a second.”  
  
He glanced at Kurt as Cooper left, running a hand through his hair and leaning forward to press light kisses to his jaw line. “I’ll be right back,” he murmured, pulling away to look at Kurt, his brow furrowing at the slight sadness that dotted the specs of dark blue texturing his eyes. “You okay?” he murmured, fingers smoothing out the frown-lines sketched lightly over Kurt’s forehead.  
  
Kurt gazed at him for a moment in silence before shaking his head, his smile small but genuine. “I just . . . it’s stupid. Nothing’s really changed but I . . . I feel more myself somehow. I don’t know, its—”  
  
His voice was cut off by a light kiss and the quiet murmur of, “That’s not stupid,” against his lips, spoken using the air from his lungs, the words so close Kurt could feel them being embedded into his skin.  
  
Blaine pulled away with a reassuring smile, his hand smoothing over the shoulders of Kurt’s shirt before he murmured, “Make yourself at home, I’ll be right back.”  
  
He found Cooper flat on his back in the guest bedroom, his eyes directed at the ceiling. When he heard Blaine come in he shot up quickly with a reprimanding statement of, “You got rid of that poster of me. I’m _wounded_.”  
  
“It was scaring my friends,” Blaine replied sternly, dumping a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt in front of Cooper and making his way back out of the room to find his brother some toiletries.  
  
Cooper’s loud footsteps followed him into the bathroom and he resumed leaning against the doorway as Blaine fell into a crouch and started searching through the cupboard under his sink. “I can’t believe you threw that out, it was signed.”  
  
“Because you’ve lost the ability to sign things?”  
  
“Blaine, honestly, that could have been worth a lot of money someday, use your head,” Cooper informed him sternly, raising an eyebrow at him when Blaine turned to stare at him.  
  
“Just sign another poster.”  
  
“Blaine, did you know that posters can’t become vintage and worth a lot of money if people throw them out after three years? Have you never seen _Pocahontas_?”  
  
“What does that have to do with anything?”  
  
“How high can the sycamore grow, Blaine?”  
  
Blaine snorted loudly, rising to his feet and placing an unopened toothbrush on the counter in front of him. “You can’t be serious right now,” he declared, staring at his brother with every bit of his incredulity written across his face.  
  
Cooper’s mouth dropped open, his face forming into an exaggerated, wounded expression and he raised a hand over his heart. “‘Can’t be serious,’ I don’t even know what to say, Jesus, Blaine, I—of course I’m fucking with you.”  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes. “You’re an idiot, I’m going to sleep.”  
  
“No, you’re going to bed,” Cooper teased, jabbing a finger at his shoulder as he passed. “Hell of a difference, little brother.”  
  
At the vague reminder that Kurt was still in his room and all the things that had occurred in the past couple of weeks, Blaine paused, his face softening as the jokes that passed between him and his brother seemed to fade into something serious and he turned to face Cooper, his earnestness seeming to shock the bold grin off his face.  
  
“Thank you, Cooper.”  
  
Cooper frowned curiously at him, his gaze passing between Blaine, the ajar door of his bedroom and the darkness beyond, looking as though he were trying to ascertain something. “You and him . . . ?” he started before cutting himself off, his gaze returning to rest on Blaine. Blaine tilted his head in puzzlement as Cooper continued to stare at him thoughtfully before shaking his head. “Never mind,” he murmured before smiling warmly. “You’re welcome.”  


* * *

  
His room was still dark when he got back to it, the light never having been turned on.  
He didn’t realize that Kurt was asleep at first, the long limbs of his body spread out over the bed, pale and silky in the strips of moonlight streaming in through the cracks in his blinds. He was on his back when Blaine came in but a moment later he made a soft grunt and shifted onto his side, his back to Blaine, the pale white of his shirt matching his skin.  
  
Blaine swallowed thickly, watching him. Thoughts of what Cooper had wanted to ask hovered at the back of his brain, but they were discarded as easily as the shirt on his back and his jeans.  
  
He eased himself into the bed, careful not to wake the still form of the sleeping boy in front of him, but he couldn’t help but raise a hand to his hair, smoothing the silky strands before he placed a soft kiss near Kurt’s temple.  
  
“I love you,” he whispered, because it was true and because there was something about the way the words filled the air around him, sustaining life like oxygen.  
  
His body slid in behind Kurt’s perfectly as he pulled his covers over them, casting an arm around Kurt’s stomach to pull him closer, lest he slip away like a wisp of cloud on the wind.


	28. Chapter 28

There was a body pressed against his back as he awoke, curved, lean and strong as it slotted in behind him, one strong arm wrapped around his waist to hold him close. There were long fingers resting warm against his stomach under the thin material of his T-shirt.  
  
Kurt let out a content breath as sleep left him and his eyes flickered open, his body shifting instinctively backwards, closer to the warm embrace. To the face that was pressed against the back of his neck, hot air breathed against it in long, deep breaths.  
  
He blinked at the room, his bones pliant, body leaning backwards into Blaine and for the first time in a long time, he felt utterly content, almost prepared to let himself sink into the mattress and simply be.  
  
But at the same time he felt strangely restless, like he’d donned a set of clothes that felt new, but were actually from years before and he just wanted to walk around with them. Just to see how it felt. To see if they suited him better than the clothes he wore now.  
  
With a gentle hand, he ran his fingers along the bare skin at the back of Blaine’s hand, marveling in its warmth and softness before carefully pulling it away, easing himself out of the bed. The floor was cool under his feet, like grass at dawn, still wet with dew.  
  
The water in the shower was hot, steam billowing up around him like the embrace of fog on an evening when the air was heavy with the promise of rain.  
  
He closed his eyes and let the water pour over him, pounding down his back and washing away the last of the weights holding him down. Freeing his spirit little by little. He thought it was silly, actually, that he should feel that way. Nothing was different after all, not really. He’d go back to Lima and be confined there for months. He’d go to McKinley and be faced with the same people, the same hate.  
  
But then there was Blaine. There was Carole and Finn and the rest of the stubbornly persistent glee club.  
  
So maybe he’d make it out okay.  
  
He felt like singing. It was a strange feeling, something warm in his chest, something that he hadn’t felt in a long time. He couldn’t remember the last time he sang, _properly_ sang, committing to the emotion and the vulnerability of a song. He’d sung for Blaine, but it wasn’t the same, not really. He hadn’t quite let go as much as he did now, letting his voice rise with the steam, a little rough and unused but growing stronger with each voice, each repeatedly hit high note.  
  
The shampoo was smooth and cool over the palms of his hands as he worked it into his hair. It smelled like Blaine, reminding Kurt of the time he’d woken up in Blaine’s bed, limbs tangled, and of when Blaine had stayed at his apartment, leaving one of Kurt’s pillows carrying his scent. When he and Blaine had stood together under that very showerhead, Blaine massaging Kurt’s scalp with his fingers, the world beyond billowing clouds of steam ceasing to exist.  
  
He didn’t realize how loud he was singing until he turned the shower off and could hear the echoes of his voice off the smooth tiles of the bathroom. His voice dropped slightly as the waterfall of the shower was shut off and he stepped out into the sauna-like room, passing a towel over his body, mind still caught up in the song.  
  
He didn’t bother styling his hair, choosing simply to rub a towel through it as he pulled on a pair of old sweatpants and wandered back out into the main room, the enthusiastic rise and fall of his voice dimming to an absentminded hum as he neared Blaine’s bedroom door. He paused in the doorway to watch the sleeping figure, unmoved from the moment that Kurt had left except for the fact that he’d pulled the nearest pillow toward himself, his arms wrapping tight and strong around it.  
  
It filled Kurt’s heart with something warm, like turning his face out toward sunlight, and he didn’t fight the affectionate smile that bloomed over his features.  
“Jesus, kid, you’ve got some pipes.”  
  
Kurt started, chilling as though someone had thrown a slushie at him and he whirled around quickly to find Cooper watching him with a bemused expression, a frilly apron that Kurt didn’t even want to question hanging around his neck and a steaming mug of coffee in his hand.  
  
Kurt suddenly became aware of the signs of life in the kitchen, of the soft whistle of the kettle sitting on a low flame, the pop and sizzle of breakfast being prepared, the scent that reminded Kurt of home, his real home, long ago, and he cursed himself for losing sight of his surroundings, his guard rising visibly.  
  
He almost felt like Cooper saw it happen, the tension filling his body like a second hand reflex, the towel in his hair falling to loop around his neck. The action, the hardening of himself on instinct against attack, earned him a raised eyebrow before Cooper lifted his lightly steaming mug at him.  
  
“Coffee?”  
  
Kurt didn’t answer, licking his lips anxiously as Cooper gazed at him expectantly for a moment before turning easily on his heel and pouring some dark liquid into a mug and setting it on the table, waving his hand at an empty chair with a grand gesture.  
  
Kurt didn’t know what to make of it, to be quite honest. He didn’t know what to make of Cooper, who so swiftly transitioned from the serious, calm lawyer to a persona almost entirely cloaked in childish ease. He glanced over his shoulder toward the bedroom, at the sleeping figure inside, the only person that he felt like he could truly understand. He was wary of the motivations of Cooper Anderson the lawyer, but Cooper Anderson the elder brother, with the automatic role of sibling protector, raised his guard even more.  
  
He approached the table cautiously, gazing at Cooper with careful scrutiny as the man turned back toward whatever he’d been doing as Kurt had momentarily been indulging himself with ghosts of past lives.  
  
“We should let Blaine sleep,” Cooper said cheerfully, his voice loud and Kurt felt certain that Cooper was probably more likely to wake Blaine up than Kurt ever could be. “Kid was probably more stressed about the whole trial thing than you were. Plus, he has absurd tastes in breakfast food, so you and I should consume these pancakes before he wakes up and starts crying that there’s nothing else to eat,” he said, glancing happily over his shoulder, though his face fell into a mask of scrutinizing suspicion. “Unless you’re also a poor soul on whom the magic of breakfast is lost.”  
  
Kurt didn’t reply, swallowing hard as he observed Cooper with a stony expression. Cooper didn’t look away, some part of his gaze challenging but the rest simply expectant, as though he wanted nothing more than a simple denial or affirmation of the statement.  
  
But Kurt knew better than to think that was all he might want and as the air in his lungs grew heavy he jerked his gaze away and stared sullenly at his cup of coffee, trying not to let his mind run away with him.  
  
“Damn, you really can just switch it on and off,” Cooper mused, his voice interested, his gaze poring over Kurt like an x-ray, like Cooper was trying to see right through the thickness of his skin.  
  
Kurt didn’t answer, staring at the darkness in his cup of coffee as Cooper moved about the kitchen, humming slightly to himself as he went before plopping down a plate loaded with pancakes and dropping down in the seat next to Kurt’s. The suddenness of the action startled Kurt and he jumped, his chair scooting back several inches. His gaze met Cooper’s slightly amused gaze as the older Anderson brother leaned back in his seat, scooping up an ample size of pancake and all but shoving it in his mouth.  
  
“What song was that, by the way?” Cooper asked conversationally after having swallowed a mouthful of coffee, looking up at Kurt with a grin. When Kurt didn’t answer, he pursed his lips thoughtfully and took another bite of breakfast. “It’s from _Sunset Boulevard_ isn’t it? As If We Never Said Goodbye, right? Something super long like that,” he said with a laugh, his twinkling gaze meeting Kurt’s silent, brooding stare. “C’mon, kid, I know you’re not mute—”  
  
“What the hell is this?” Kurt demanded suddenly, unable to hold back and Cooper paused or mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open as he tilted his head curiously.  
  
“What is what?”  
  
Kurt snorted, shaking his head, the sweeping motion of his hand exaggerated. “ _This_.”  
  
Cooper’s brow furrowed in confusion. “This is breakfast?”  
  
Kurt exhaled sharply through his nose, wrinkling it slightly as his gaze dropped down to his hands. He shook his head, giving up on trying to will away his own emotions. “Why did you do it?” he asked sharply, his hard gaze flying up to meet Cooper’s confused one.  
  
“You’re going have to help me out, kid—”  
  
“Why were you so insistent on helping me?” Kurt interjected, easing his chair closer and leaning across the table toward Cooper, who continued to look completely puzzled by the outburst. “I clearly wasn’t cooperating, so why did you still insist on doing something? What’s your angle? I know Blaine—” Kurt stopped, his expression steeling. He knew why Blaine had insisted on helping him. Because Blaine was stubborn and beautiful and had seen right through him when he had fought so hard to let no one close to him. Who had seen his faults, who had been hurt by him but _still_ fought for him. Who still loved him despite everything and who had, little by little, chipped away at his armor and stolen his heart.  
  
Blaine he understood. Cooper Anderson was a different story.  
  
Cooper raised an eyebrow, staring at Kurt with a curious intensity, waiting for him to finish. His eyes captured Kurt’s, his gaze sweeping across Kurt’s face as though he were busy reading his innermost thoughts.  
  
After a brief moment of silent scrutiny he pursed his lips and set his fork down. “How much has Blaine told you about himself?” he said finally, leaning back in his seat and fixing Kurt with a more serious look than Kurt had thought him to be capable of. He didn’t move as his words hit Kurt and the boy let out a snort of amusement, his head dropping down as he shook it back and forth. As though he was finally getting something he’d been expecting from Cooper for a long time.  
  
“Nothing,” Kurt replied, his voice harsh and hiding the pain of the realization that where he’d shared so much with Blaine, he didn’t really know much about Blaine’s past. “This the part where you tell me all these great things about Blaine and about how he’s way too fucking good for a low-life like me and how I can’t be in love with him?”  
  
Cooper looked a little stunned, his brow furrowing further until his eyes were shadowed by it. He didn’t say anything, made no response to Kurt’s outburst but to stare at him, his eyes momentarily dark before they lit with a light that Kurt didn’t know how to identify.  
  
“I . . . am not going to tell you you can’t be with my brother,” he replied eventually, his expression still scrutinizing. He didn’t waver as Kurt huffed loudly in response, his eyes blazing defensively. “I just . . . my sophomore year of college, I decided that I was going to drop out of Princeton and try to make it big in Hollywood.”  
  
Kurt narrowed his eyes, caught off-guard by the change of subject, but refusing to be thrown.  
  
Cooper chuckled to himself, shaking his head at the memory. “I took a year off and I flew to California, fully convinced that I was the greatest thing they’d ever seen. I never got much further than a FreeCreditRating.com commercial, but, God, I thought I was the shit. I—”  
  
“ _You’re_ the guy from those commercials?” Kurt interrupted, forgetting his mission to remain silent and brooding and instead feeling the surprise course through him at the sudden familiarity of the man sitting at the same table as him. He saw when Cooper caught the youthful widening of his eyes, the soft nature of his face seeping back into him.  
  
Cooper laughed. “That I am.”  
  
Kurt inhaled, long and slow before frowning at Cooper, a little less on his guard but still suspicious. “What’s the point of this?”  
  
Cooper looked sympathetic. “He really never told you about Sadie Hawkins, did he?”  
  
When Kurt’s only answer was silent puzzlement, Cooper sighed, leaning back in his seat and ruffling his hair with his hand. “If he hasn’t told you, I shouldn’t say anything. You shouldn’t hear it from me, but . . . you want to know why I insisted on helping you, even before Blaine was involved, and I’m not sure how to explain it without Sadie Hawkins.” The hand in his hair fell to the back of his neck, where it massaged the muscle there anxiously. “My brother and I weren’t always close,” he continued after a moment of silence. “For a long time we didn’t get along at all. I was . . . to be honest, I was a self-absorbed jackass and Blaine was . . . well, _Blaine_ , dealing with all his own shit. I went to school eight hours away and . . . I got swept up in it and myself and . . . Blaine came out when he was . . .” Cooper crinkled his nose, gazing at the ceiling. “Fifteen. Same year I took a year off of school and went to Hollywood. That year he went to the Sadie Hawkins dance with another guy. Just a friend, but he was out too, so, what else could that possibly mean in middle Ohio?”  
  
Kurt started when Cooper looked at him suddenly, his expression pained, almost haunted by things of the past that lingered, but were seldom spoken of. Even before Cooper spoke again, Kurt realized he knew exactly what he was going to say, like he’d seen it before.  
  
It was that flash of fear that Kurt had spotted in that brief instance during which he’d lost control with Blaine, when Blaine had been trying to draw the anger out of him. When Blaine’s back had struck against the brick wall of that room, Kurt’s hands fisted in his cardigan, and for the first time since Kurt had known him he’d looked like he’d truly miscalculated. Like he was afraid that Kurt might hurt him after all.  
  
Cooper continued to speak, his voice falling until Kurt could barely hear him, like he was talking to himself. “They were attacked that night. Got the shit beat out of them. Blaine was in the hospital for weeks. Couple of thugs from the school, probably. They were never caught because no one ever really gives a shit, do they?” His voice was laced with bitterness, the residual anger in it startling even to Kurt. “I should have . . . I was across the fucking country when it happened and I . . . I’m his brother and I should have done _something_. I didn’t even know about it when it happened, actually. I found out a couple months later, when I went back. I felt like shit, like I’d failed in some sort of brotherly duties and he said he blamed me for it but I always felt like I spent all my energy afterward trying to make it up to him. Like somewhere in his heart he does and if I do enough good, I might be able to make it up to him.”  
  
Kurt swallowed, feeling his shoulders relaxing slightly as he stared at Cooper. He was surprised by how, even in the slight sadness of the admiration, the lingering somberness in his eyes, he watched Kurt with the same, complete calm that he had in the courtroom the other day, his expression strong and almost challenging. But at the same time, Kurt could suddenly see him just a little bit clearer, the older brother who was trying to fix the world, to fix the break he thought existed in his relationship with his brother.  
  
It was the way Kurt thought family should be.  
  
“People like you piss me off, to be honest,” Cooper said suddenly, letting out a snort of laughter as Kurt stiffened defensively almost immediately. “The first couple of days when you refused to cooperate, that is.” Kurt let out a soft noise of acknowledgment, his lips flattening. “Just . . . made me think of that night and how I could have done something but I couldn’t, so to see you being able to do something and _refusing_. But . . .” he paused, raising his eyes to Kurt, his expression still curious, but warm. “I guess that should answer your question.”  
  
Kurt blinked slightly, almost having forgotten the inquiry. He felt the edges of his lips curve up slightly at Cooper, but he didn’t say anything, stuck in one of the few times where he wasn’t sure what the proper thing would be to say. Where he wanted to actually say the right thing rather than simply saying the first scathing remark on his mind—not that he currently had one of those either.  
  
He shifted in his seat under the calm stillness of Cooper’s gaze, glancing over his shoulder toward the open door to Blaine’s bedroom door, not necessarily waiting for Blaine to save him, but because he was filled with the sudden urge to look upon him.  
  
Cooper noticed the movement and his gaze softened finally, as though the entire time he’d been speaking he’d only been awaiting Kurt’s reactions, to attempt to figure out something about him and the glance back toward the dim bedroom, lit only by the attempts of the sun to penetrate through the blinds, seemed to be the answer he’d been waiting for.  
  
“So, I know I said I wasn’t doing the evil parent lecture,” Cooper said suddenly and Kurt jumped again, his attention flying to the Anderson brother at the table with him. “But I almost feel obligated to pull the big brother card and tell you that Blaine might not act like it, but he’s had to deal with a ton of shit so you sure as hell better make sure you’re in love with him before you continue this.”  
  
“Who said I was in love with him?” Kurt said automatically before he could stop himself, like Cooper’s words came as more of an attack than he’d anticipated. He wanted to hate the sudden influx of knowing sympathy that filled Cooper’s gaze, the almost brotherly affection residing there. The way Cooper’s lips curved into a teasing smirk, like Kurt was a child dong something forbidden.  
  
“You did,” he replied simply, smiling when Kurt blinked in surprise. “When you thought that I was going to tell you you couldn’t be.”  
  
On instinct, Kurt opened his mouth to protest, but it was as though his own slip of tongue, combined with Cooper’s swift observance of it, forced away that layer of distrust he had toward Cooper and, after a brief moment of staring at him in puzzlement, Kurt exhaled softly, a shy smile breaking out over his features.  
  
And with that smile he ducked his head with a twinkle in his eye, his shoulders relaxing against the backrest of his chair, eyes directed absently at his coffee, his mind immediately a million miles away. There seemed to be something pleasing in the dancing swirl of steam rising from his coffee, even as the dark liquid cooled to room temperature and the droplets of evaporating water hovering invisible in the air like ghosts of a memory.  
  
“He doesn’t hate you,” Kurt murmured quietly, not looking at Cooper but sensing his reaction, the little furrow of his brow, the flicker of a twinkle in his eyes.  
  
Cooper watched him, his cheek resting on his hand, the truth of Kurt’s words prodding gently against his heart. “Does he know—no, of course he knows,” he corrected himself, tilting his head as he continued to watch Kurt, whose expression only softened further. “Have you told him?”  
  
Kurt’s smile spread impossibly wider, lighting up his entire face, from the dimples carved deep into his cheeks, to the wrinkle of his nose, to the laughter lines forming around his eyes. “I told him.”  
  
“What have you told me?” Blaine asked with a yawn from the doorway to his bedroom.  
  
Cooper couldn’t help smiling fondly as Kurt turned to look at him instantly, his gaze sweeping up and down Blaine’s body as the latter stretched, the muscles of his arms flexing above his head and the hem of his T-shirt rising to reveal a patch of skin just above the waistband of his boxers.  
  
“Nothing,” Kurt answered smoothly and Cooper was surprised by how low and warm his voice had grown.  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes and dropped his arms, crossing the room quickly and leaning down to draw Kurt into a deep kiss, his hand warm and strong along Kurt’s jaw, drawing him in as though it were the most natural thing in the world. As though Blaine woke up every morning to Kurt and breakfast and early morning kisses, like the time and space between affection caused by sleep was far too great.  
  
“What did you tell me?” Blaine insisted, his lips coming back to brush against Kurt’s before he moved behind Cooper to pour himself some coffee, wrinkling his nose at the amount of food on Cooper’s plate.  
  
“It’s not my fault you obviously weren’t paying attention,” Kurt reprimanded sternly, though his eyes twinkled like the disappearing sparks of fireworks exploding over the night sky.  
  
Blaine wrinkled his nose playfully over his mug as he leaned against the counter, looking imploringly at his brother. “Tell me, Coop?”  
  
Cooper laughed, short, but loud and booming. He stuffed several forkfuls of pancakes into his mouth before sliding the plate with the remainder toward Kurt with a cheeky wink, rising from his seat. “Oh, leave me out of it,” he commanded, finishing off his coffee and his hand darting out to ruffle his brother’s hair. Kurt snorted from his seat as Blaine all but spasmed and spilled his entire cup of coffee trying to get away. “I’m sure you have . . . sufficient means of extorting that information from him,” Cooper laughed loudly, his eyes flickering almost uncertainly when they met Kurt’s, as though he realized that Kurt could see him now. Really see him, even as he was hiding behind a merry persona. Could see him constantly trying to fix things.  
  
“So, I know I was supposed to babysit you, but I have to go take care of some stuff,” Cooper continued, winking at Kurt. He turned to Blaine. “Be at the station by five, ‘kay?”  
  
“Where the hell are you going?” Blaine demanded, leaning against the counter, his breath dispersing clouds of steam like a light, summer breeze.  
  
“Some of us have important lives, Blainey,” Cooper commented with a casual wave of his hand. “Things to see, people to do.”  
  
Cooper effortlessly plucked his jacket from a coat hook and, with a dramatic, sweeping bow and proclamation of, “Enjoy yourselves, gentlemen,” moved toward the door, his eyes lingering for a moment on his brother.  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes and quickly finished off his cup of coffee with two long gulps as Kurt speared a piece of pancake onto his fork and brought it experimentally to his mouth, staring thoughtfully at Cooper. He almost, in the click of the door closing, missed Blaine’s sudden presence behind him, the warm breath of air in his ear. “I’m going back to bed.”  
  
“You just had coffee, there’s no way you’re falling asleep again,” Kurt muttered absently, though there was a flutter of wings in his stomach.  
  
His breath hitched as Blaine laughed in his ear, his hands warm, their weight so very real as they rested on either of Kurt’s shoulders. “You know, yesterday my brother took it upon himself to inform me that going to bed and going to sleep are two very different things,” he murmured, his lips millimeters from Kurt’s pulse point, the space between them tingling like energy emitted from rapidly firing neurons. “I wanted to . . . discuss it with you last night, but you just had to go and fall asleep on me.”  
  
Kurt snorted, the air in his lungs escaping him quicker than he expected as his skin tingled with Blaine’s proximity. In a smooth motion he ducked away from Blaine, his nose in the air and a smirk on his face as he sashayed away toward the bedroom, feeling Blaine’s gaze darkening as it fixed on the easy swing of his hips.  
  
He remembered the days when he’d looked years younger than his age and he’d walked through the halls of McKinley imagining a world in which the jocks that threw slushies in his face and tossed him into dumpsters actually walked by him and stared because he was what they wanted.  
  
He remembered when for months he’d lived for the way strangers eyes would be drawn to the sway of his hips as he made his way through crowds of intoxicated college students, reveling in the power that he could finally have over them, in making them his escape.  
  
It didn’t compare with that moment, with the jaunt in his step and his comment about how he’d not drunk any coffee yet so he might fall asleep again if Blaine didn’t move his ass. There was something electric about that instant, about all the fleeting moments that pulled together to make a whole. When he could feel Blaine’s gaze warming him like the rays of the sun. When he caught Blaine looking at him the way he was right then, his eyes so dark that the amber in them was more like onyx.  
  
The way the drumming noise in his head intensified each minute that Blaine caught up to him and joined them together, whirling him around and pressing him against the wall. The way it spread throughout his entire body, vibrating under the pressure of Blaine’s tongue massaging his favorite spot at Kurt’s neck, pulsing with a building ache at his cock.  
  
There was something different in the way Blaine wanted, in the way he yearned and ached and seemed to need Kurt. Kurt could feel it in every little action, in the heated flush of Blaine’s skin where Kurt’s hands scrambled under his shirt, running over his flexing muscles and feeling goosebumps rising in the wake of his touch.  
  
Kurt groaned, his head against the wall as Blaine pressed him against it, his tongue still on that spot on Kurt’s neck just above his collarbone, the spot that he had quickly figured out would paint the heat of a blush across Kurt’s cheeks and force his breaths to grow ragged.  
  
There was a closeness that he’d never really felt before. A newness to everything that only intensified Kurt’s want, the constancy of a pressure that he now succumbed to whenever he so much as thought of Blaine. He pulled Blaine closer, eliminating the distance between their bodies, engulfing himself in their nearness. Blaine groaned against his neck, lips dotting Kurt’s neck with open-mouthed kisses as he worked his way up to Kurt’s earlobe, pausing to suck on it in such earnest that it was as though he were attempting to get the taste of Kurt permanently emblazoned on his tongue, so that each swipe of his tongue would be like the promise of a kiss.  
  
Kurt moaned, the sound of it long and drawn out, clawing its way from deep within the confines of his chest. He pushed the hem of Blaine’s shirt up, a small noise of protest escaping his lips as Blaine pulled away to tug the shirt over his head and toss it aside, but almost before the noise could finish dropping from his lips Blaine swallowed it, his mouth against Kurt’s, his kisses hard and desperate.  
  
Kurt gasped against the sweep of Blaine’s tongue, the remnants of the coffee he’d just drunk fading away into that taste that was simply Blaine, a strange sweetness that intoxicated Kurt down to his very core. The movement of Blaine’s hands over his bare chest, memorizing each muscle, each contour, each little area that made Kurt moan and arch beneath him. Each little fingerprint he left marked Kurt as his.  
  
Kurt spread his legs as Blaine moved his own between them, his head falling back against the wall as he ground down against Blaine’s thigh, desperately seeking the friction and the heat.  
  
“Jesus, Kurt,” Blaine groaned against his skin, his tongue working over the scar on Kurt’s neck, sucking on the skin and soothing it over with his tongue until Kurt was writhing and panting against him, an explosive tightness gripping at him even in the looseness of the borrowed sweatpants.  
  
“God, want you,” Kurt mumbled, his words running together and blurring like the steam of a hot shower clouding up a mirror.  
  
“What do you want?” Blaine groaned out, rubbing his thigh harder up against Kurt’s erection, biting down at the skin of Kurt’s neck as the latter keened loudly, stretching his neck further.  
  
Kurt felt his very breath die out in his lungs as Blaine thumbed over his nipple, the overload of sensation building to a breaking point within him and he was almost afraid he wasn’t going to hold out much longer, not with the fiery heat and the sizzle of electricity. “Fuck, I want—”  
  
“What’s that, Yoda?” Blaine teased, his voice low and rough, his hands playing the ridges of Kurt’s spine like an instrument before sliding easily under the waistband of his pants, kneading the flesh as he pulled Kurt closer.  
  
“Fuck. Me,” Kurt managed out between gritted teeth, his eyes squeezed shut at the cacophony of stimuli and almost as soon as the words left his mouth it was like a cool gust of air hit him as Blaine moved away, his back to Kurt and moving across the room before Kurt could even blink, his whine escaping him before he could stop it. He pushed himself away from the wall but he’d barely made it a step before Blaine was back on him, shoving him backwards and crowding him against it, his eyes dark and glistening with an insurmountable want.  
  
They stood staring, their chests just barely brushing against each other with each sharp inhale, the air between them littered with sparks of electricity. Blaine’s eyes darted down to Kurt’s lips as Kurt’s tongue darted out to wet them, to relieve some of the heated pressure that pounded through his body before Blaine dropped down to his knees, his hands passing over the smooth contours of Kurt’s sides, from the still-lightly bruised skin of his shoulders along the sensitive curve of his hipbones that, when his skin wasn’t heated with the light pink of blush and arousal, tickled his nerves.  
  
Blaine’s hands skimmed over the waistband of Kurt’s sweatpants before his face was level with it and he toyed with them before dropping them down completely, letting them pool into a pile at his feet.  
  
Kurt had seen plenty of want, even swimming in alcohol but the sight of Blaine on his knees in front of him, his eyes trained hungrily on the rosy pink of Kurt’s erection as it strained upward toward his stomach completely took his breath away.  
Blaine swallowed hard, his tongue swiping slowly across his bottom lip as he dropped the condom he’d crossed the room for on the floor beside him, the soft noise of its collision with the ground barely audible over the harshness of their breaths. He kept the bottle of lube in his hand, squirting a liberal amount onto his palm and releasing the bottle to the powers of gravity, spreading the lubricant over his fingers with one hand as the other skimmed over Kurt’s hip before his fingers circled around Kurt’s erection and he swept his tongue up the prominent vein on its underside, the drag long and slow.  
  
Kurt gasped out, the moan that vibrated through his voicebox dying before it could become a reality and he thrust his hips toward Blaine, as the latter swirled his tongue over the head of Kurt’s cock and pulled away, licking his lips again as though to spread Kurt’s taste over them greedily. His eyes darkened impossibly further as he coated his mouth with it and he leaned back in quickly, swirling his tongue around the slit as though he were licking the tip of a swirl of frozen yogurt before sinking his mouth down over the head.  
  
Kurt groaned out some sort of mixture of Blaine’s name and a swear, his hips thrusting away from the wall before he could stop them and Blaine made a small noise, adjusting the position of his head to avoid choking as he swiped his tongue along Kurt’s cock, hollowing his cheeks to take him further. He squeezed the hand around Kurt’s base but otherwise didn’t stop him from pushing himself deeper into his mouth. His free hand, still slick with lubricant, pressed fingerprints into Kurt’s hip, but its presence there was fleeting before it moved, pressing in between Kurt’s cheeks, Blaine’s pointer finger massaging at the tight ring of muscle at his hole.  
  
The rumble of amused laughter vibrating through Blaine’s throat, rumbling around the head of Kurt’s cock in his mouth did little to help the explosions building at the base of Kurt’s spine as the latter’s head fell back against the wall with a loud thump as he gasped for breath, torn between chasing the wet heat of Blaine’s mouth and the firm pressure of his finger against his asshole.  
  
“Blaine, Blaine, fuck, Blaine,” he muttered, his voice breathless and strung as Blaine’s finger pressed inside him gently, twisting as he worked past Kurt’s heated tightness, his tongue swirling in rhythm with the movements of his hand. The care in each motion filled Kurt’s chest with an unparalleled heat and he gasped, his breaths ragged as his body sought more of what only Blaine could give him, wanting to come undone the way only Blaine could make him.  
  
It had been only Blaine for a long time.  
  
Blaine groaned softly as Kurt’s hand twisted through his curls, rumpled and unstyled after a night of sleep and his other hand slapped down against the wall, seeking some sort of hold to ground himself with as Blaine stretched him open, twisting his fingers and slowly adding more until he had three fingers pumping in and out of Kurt to the rhythm of the bob of his head, his fingers crooking up as they dragged out, brushing against Kurt’s prostate with each pull.  
  
“Jesus fuck, Blaine, you’ve— _God_ —you’ve got to . . . I’m not going to, fuck, _Blaine_ —”  
  
Blaine pulled off with a moan and a lewd popping noise, licking his lips as he gazed up at Kurt through the thick fan of his lashes, his lips pink from the stretch and the dark red of a heated blush coating his cheeks, blending into the darkness of his complexion.  
  
They stared for a moment that seemed to stretch into hours before Blaine pulled out and Kurt resisted the urge to whine at the loss as Blaine rose swiftly to his feet, grabbing the condom and lube off the floor as he went. He crowded Kurt back against the wall, lifting wrapped protection and holding it between his teeth as he hooked the thumbs of both his hands under the waistband of his boxers, careful not to drop the bottle of lubricant, and pushed them to the ground. He kicked them away as he ripped the condom wrapper, his eyes boring into Kurt’s as the latter eased the lube out of Blaine’s grip, coating his hand with it and wrapping it around Blaine’s erection as the condom was rolled down it.  
  
“Kurt,” Blaine groaned at the lightest of touches, his hips jerking forward toward Kurt’s grip as Kurt wrapped his other hand around Blaine’s neck and pressed a shockingly gentle kiss to his lips.  
  
“I love you,” he murmured softly, stilling the moment before Blaine surged forward, his kiss hungrier and messier as he pressed Kurt hard against the wall, his hands flying down to wrap Kurt’s thighs around his waist, lifting Kurt against the wall.  
  
Kurt moaned into the kiss, wrapping an arm around Blaine’s neck while guiding Blaine toward his entrance, the kiss growing messier as the head of Blaine’s cock pushed inside him, his length filling Kurt with a burning heat.  
  
Blaine thrust into him in small, short movements, as though trying to allow Kurt to adjust to the sensation but was unable to hold himself back, giving into pure desire and hunger and it wasn’t long before he was pushing forward in earnest, his kisses growing into a messy clash of tongue and teeth, only the sounds of their desperate moans and the slap of skin on skin as Blaine fucked Kurt hard into the wall bursting through the thick heat of sex that surrounded them.  
  
Kurt clung to Blaine, both his arms wrapped around his neck and holding him tight as Blaine rocked into him, his pace rapid, his cock hitting Kurt’s prostate with each hard thrust into him, exploding little white stars across the darkness of his vision and the heat that Blaine always so carefully brought from a simmer bubbled quickly through his veins, his blood molten like lava and he gasped as the pressure at the base of his spine swelled and snapped, shocks of pleasure taking over each sensation in his body as he came between them, his eyes squeezed shut and his admissions of his love against Blaine’s lips soundless, his breath taken away as Blaine came shortly after, their bodies slumping against the wall and quivering with the intensity of emotion.

* * *

  
“This is awful, why are we watching it?” Kurt mumbled quietly against the fabric of Blaine’s T-shirt, his body loose and still sated from sex. He shifted to burrow further into the space at Blaine’s side, Blaine’s arm tightening around his shoulders in full support of the movement. They sat leaning back against the plush cushions of Blaine’s couch, the blinds of his windows down to lock out the outside world. Kurt moved his legs to tangle with Blaine’s under the blankets.  
  
“Because there’s nothing better than coffee and mid-afternoon reality TV marathons,” Blaine replied easily, smoothing the fabric of Kurt’s shirt with his thumb.  
  
“Is there seriously nothing better on?”  
  
“Shows better than Jersey Shore do not exist,” Blaine admonished sternly with a chuckle, leaning his cheek into the silky softness of Kurt’s hair, reveling in the way it tickled, smiling warmly at the heavy pressure of Kurt’s hand on his abdomen.  
  
“Why the fuck is she orange and why has no one told her that is in no way appealing to anyone of any sexuality?” Kurt retorted, but Blaine could hear the easy banter in his voice as he watched the action playing out on the screen.  
  
“The Situation’s abs though.”  
  
Kurt shifted against him again, nuzzling his cheek against Blaine’s shoulder as he contemplated the person in question, the heel of his foot rubbing gently against Blaine’s ankle. “I don’t know, I think I’ve seen better.”  
  
Blaine snorted. “You’re joking.”  
  
“Next disaster party Rachel throws, we’ll get Mike to take off his shirt and I’ll prove it to you.”  
  
Blaine raised an eyebrow, tilting his head to look down at Kurt, the angle showing only where the loose strands of his bangs fell over his eyes and where his long lashes rose gently away from his profile. “You been checking out other guys, Hummel? I’m wounded.”  
  
Kurt laughed, the action rumbling through his chest and vibrating his body lightly against Blaine’s. “Honey, you’re cut but your tummy doesn’t leave much room for abs as good as Mike’s.” His hand patted lightly at the body part in question.  
  
“Please, I have abs—”  
  
“Spray-painted on a white T-shirt because you went trick-or-treating as the Situation?” Kurt teased with a smirk, squealing loudly and suddenly when Blaine flipped them over in one swift motion, straddling Kurt’s hips as he pinned his arms over his head with one hand, the other hovering over Kurt’s own stomach.  
  
“You take that back,” Blaine demanded, hovering over Kurt with an evil glint in his eyes even as the corners of his lips turned up into a smirk. His hand pushed Kurt’s shirt up and his fingers moved teasingly over the sensitive skin.  
  
Kurt sucked in a breath, trying to pull his stomach away from Blaine’s fingers. “You totally have that costume don’t you?”  
  
“If you don’t take it back I’ll make you come trick-or-treating with me as Snooki,” Blaine warned.  
  
“But I don’t look good in orange!”  
  
“Take it back, then!”  
  
“No!” Kurt yelled loudly, the end of the yell flying up to a higher pitch as Blaine’s fingers finally made contact, skirting over Kurt’s stomach as he tickled him, pinning Kurt in place with the weight of the body.  
  
“Take it back!”  
  
“No!” Kurt gasped, trying to squirm out of the way but Blaine kept him in place, his giggles ringing over the action on the television screen, his entire face scrunched up as Blaine’s fingers moved quickly over the sensitive skin of his sides. “Fine! God, fine!”  
  
“Say you love my abs!” Blaine commanded as Kurt bucked underneath him, unable to stop the laugh from echoing through his voice.  
  
“I do! I love them, I love you, _God_!” Kurt wheezed, tears of laughter falling smoothly down the side of his face.  
  
As soon as the admission dropped from his lips Blaine stilled his movements and ducked down, kissing Kurt lightly on the cheek before pulling back to stare at him, his eyes full of liquid warmth and his expression shining with affection. Kurt’s chest still rose and fell as he tried to catch his breath, his eyes sparking with emotion when he finally managed to open them.  
  
Blaine smiled and moved his body closer to Kurt’s resting his weight on the hand that wasn’t pinning Kurt’s wrists above his head and let his lips hover just millimeters away from Kurt’s before he whispered, “I love you too.”


	29. Chapter 29

Kurt had read a quote once. _Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years, but of moments. You must experience each one before you can appreciate it._ He wasn’t sure how long he’d believed it, how long he had thought to contemplate life in such a manner, but as he lay in the dark on his bed in the guest bedroom in Carole Hudson’s house—which, he supposed, was no longer a guest bedroom but _his_ —cell phone in hand and bare chest still rising and falling in deep, frequent bursts of air, it was all he could think of.  
  
Moments, small, seemingly insignificant moments that wound together to create a life.  
  
There was the moment, only minutes ago, when his cell phone screen had died to black, covering up the text message conversation and images sent and phone calls made. A small, tiny moment that had shrouded the minutes of heavy breathing and tight fists pumping until nerves were alight with fire and backs were curving into majestic arcs.  
  
It was a moment that could be forgotten, if one tried to forget it or didn’t look quite too closely for signs that it had occurred, but as Kurt lay on his bed, arm cast over his stomach and limbs loose and sinking into his comforter, he doubted it would be one that was wholly insignificant. Perhaps it wasn’t life-defining, but it placed a smile on his face, his exhaustion blissful and Kurt cherished those moments, knowing how easily they could be driven away by something far less peaceful.  
  
It was a strange position to find oneself in, having to readjust to the abnormality of a normal life. To go home to somewhere besides a run-down apartment, with four walls placed barely several paces worth apart and memories scattered and dusty in the corners, foraged from past lives. To have Finn no longer wary of tagging alongside him and therefore deciding that he needed to pursue Kurt down the halls and act as a bodyguard, even though Kurt had made it perfectly clear that Finn would, most likely, make a fairly useless bodyguard. To go to sleep to a peaceful, home-like quiet rather than the neighbors yelling things that he didn’t even _want_ to understand. To wake up to the smell of pancakes and waffles floating up and filling the house with the reminders of family and kinship.  
  
The pancakes and waffles made him think of Blaine and Blaine’s odd little aversion to breakfast foods.  
  
A lot of things made him think about Blaine and it was surprising because they were things that in most cases ought not have anything at all to do with Blaine. The way the snow crunched sometimes under his boots. The rich scent of coffee that Rachel insisted on bringing him every morning, refusing to rest until she cornered him and forced him to accept it, her face so eager that he couldn’t help but relax and smile in response. In the way Puck would give a song his all, pick flying across the strings of a guitar or the way Brittany would try to pull him into a run through the parking lot whenever school got out and it was snowing.  
  
It was a strange sort of awakening, if he was perfectly honestly with himself. Like it was as though he were waking up from one dream, but only to fall into another one. As much as he’d tried to hide it or deny it or run from it, he’d always considered the New Directions his friends. There had always been this small thought, lingering out of sight at the back of his mind, that when it came to it he would have someone there to back him up. Prideful as he was, he ran from it but it still remained, like a touch of dew on grass in the early hours of dawn.  
  
But there had always been another part of himself that didn’t think he meant as much to them as they did to him. A part that took stock in the bickering and the claws that were whipped out during competitions for solos and the people that got pushed aside for the same leads to take the spotlight.  
  
So to be thrown back into their midst, to be welcomed with open arms by the people that he had fled from, was like sweeping the rug out from under his feet and he was scrambling to find something to hold onto. Those little moments like beads strung on the thread that made up his life.  


* * *

  
There was the moment in late February, two weeks after he’d been thrust into the strangeness that was a “normal” life. Well, the one that reminded him that perhaps he could have a normal life, whatever that meant. It was when he saw Blaine for the first time since the day they’d spent having sex and arguing over quality television, caught in a post-trial haze that compressed the minutes so that they went by far too quickly.  
  
He hadn’t been expecting anyone, not when he’d finally gotten rid of Rachel after assuring her that, no, he really, really didn’t need her help with song selections. He was alone at the piano in the choir room, stacks of sheet music scattered over the dark ebony of its surface. His hands lingered on the air over the keys, the silence in the choir room deafening in its abnormality. His fingers lingered over the high C, the slightest of smiles hovering over his face at the two memories that it elicited.  
  
There was a scuffle at the door and he jumped, flying to his feet in defense so quickly that he almost knocked the bench over.  
  
He made a noise as Blaine laughed from the doorway, his shoulder leaning against the wood of the frame and one leg crossed over the other as he stared at Kurt. “Well, I was going to go for the simple, romantic thing of sneaking up behind you and whispering in your ear, but lucky I’m not very subtle because I probably would have lost an arm.”  
  
Kurt huffed out a breath of air, dropping back down onto the wooden bench as though the rush of relief through his body took the strength out of his bones. His gaze flickered over the keys of the piano, tongue darting out to wet his lips as he heard the light click of Blaine’s shoes over the floor as he approached, his weight falling down onto the bench next to Kurt, his back to the instrument as his shoulder brushed against Kurt’s, the sympathy of the near-accidental gesture strangely evident.  
  
“Sorry, I thought you might be—”  
  
“Karofsky?” Blaine asked quietly, his voice loud in the silence of the room.  
  
Kurt shook his head, pressing a finger down onto that high C, letting it ring out between them, high and clear like the sound of hope. “He hasn’t been back and I don’t think he’s coming back. _They’ve_ been leaving me alone ever since the whole thing but . . . I’m just wondering if it’s all going to start up again.”  
  
Blaine frowned sympathetically, leaning down to press his lips gently against Kurt’s shoulder. “What are you still doing in here so late? I caught Rachel as I was parking and she seemed all aflutter about you not letting her help you pick out audition music?”  
  
“All aflutter, really?” Kurt snorted, tilting his head to look at Blaine in amusement. When Blaine made a face Kurt laughed softly to himself, shrugging at nothing in particular. “I’m . . . trying to recapture some semblance of my old life, if I can, which means, if I’m back in the group, fighting tooth and nail for solos. Although,” he smirked, pressing down on the keys again as Blaine leaned into him, chin resting on his shoulder and breath tickling the short hairs at the back of Kurt’s neck. “I’m pretty sure I could guilt them into giving me a solo.”  
  
“That sounds about right,” Blaine laughed, twisting his body so that he could look at the keys, but Kurt could sense the exact moment that he caught sight of the sheet music on the stand of the piano, separated from the stacks lying atop it. Kurt felt his breath catch slightly in his throat as Blaine leaned back to inspect it, the palm of his hand flat and warm against Kurt’s lower back to ground himself.  
  
“You . . . this is mine,” Blaine murmured softly, so softly that Kurt couldn’t tell what the inflection in his voice was supposed to represent. The pressure of Blaine’s hand intensified as Kurt became his method for balance as he leaned closer, something shaky in his breathing as he inspected the sheets of music. “That melody I couldn’t get out of my head after that night in the park you . . . you stole my sheet music. I thought I’d lost it but you . . . you _stole_ it and you . . . you wrote lyrics, I . . .” Blaine shook his head, his eyes scanning the page and the words on his lips failing in favor of mouthing those on the page.  
  
Kurt swallowed hard, unsure of what to say. He hadn’t known what made him do it, other than having a strange little keepsake but now that he’d been discovered with it he didn’t quite know what to do. “Blaine, I . . .”  
  
“I don’t know what to say,” Blaine murmured, turning his head to look at him with wide eyes and the most immense softness in his gaze, like there was constantly something about Kurt that surprised him, that intensified that warm feeling that curled from his chest down to his very toes.  
  
“Is that a good th—” Kurt started, his voice cut off by the hard press of lips against his own, Blaine pulling him closer on the bench and holding him in place as he kissed him, close-mouthed but anything but chaste, catching his breath in his throat and erasing all traces of the outside world.  
  
“I love you a lot, okay?” Blaine muttered against his lips, never pulling away, like all he could do then was cling to the entity that was Kurt to make sure he didn’t slip away.  


* * *

  
There was the moment in mid-March when he thought that he could remember what it was like to be a teenage boy again, a proper teenage boy. The kind of teenage boy he’d never gotten to experience before he met Blaine, before his life was turned upside down and then righted in the strangest of fashions.  
  
The comforter of his bed was downy and soft as Blaine pressed him down against it, their lips moving slowly and lazily against one another, their tongues still twisting and sliding against each other as they had been for what felt like hours. It always felt like hours with Blaine, with the weight of his body pressing against Kurt’s, the scratch of his trim fingernails against Kurt’s scalp where they were twisted amongst the strands of Kurt’s hair, tugging to work his lips down to that favorite little spot where Kurt’s neck met the thin bones of his collar.  
  
He moved his body against Kurt’s as Kurt’s hands roamed across it, re-memorizing the movement of each one of Blaine’s muscles under the thin cotton of his shirt, like there was some strange possibility that the movements and strength that Kurt’s fingers now knew better than his own had changed in the time that they’d been forced to be apart.  
  
He moaned softly into Blaine’s mouth, arching up from the softness of his bed, the burn and bubble of feeling within him growing little by little, like a breeze sparking a fire in embers that had almost died out. There was the ache in his muscles as heat swirled between them and each grind of Blaine’s cock against his own.  
  
Blaine swallowed the noise, his teeth catching and pulling at Kurt’s bottom lip, his hand twisting in Kurt’s hair to pull them closer, to eliminate even the smallest particle of matter between their mouths, with the only exception being the hot air that mingled in the space separating their faces, that swirled and missed with every harsh breath drawn in and exhaled through their noses. Kurt’s hands settled on the firm swell of Blaine’s ass, hands sliding into the pockets of his denim jeans, pulling them closer until the pressure of Blaine’s cock against his, even through the fabric of their pants, was a steady constant, showering Kurt’s veins with an endless array of sparks, exploding and flashing like fireworks.  
  
“Kurt, my mom says—”  
  
Kurt let out a yelp as Blaine bit down on his lip, his body collapsing heavily atop of Kurt’s as the door to his room burst open and Finn came stumbling in, his limbs long and flailing in unimaginable ways, his shout of announcement turning into an awkward yell at the scene he came upon.  
  
“Finn!” Kurt groaned as Blaine half-rolled off him, his face remaining buried in Kurt’s shoulder and, if Kurt wasn’t mistaken, his whole body was shaking with silent _laughter_.  
  
“Sorry, wow, I . . .” Finn yelled as he stumbled backwards from the room, tripping over his own feet as he went. “Dinner’s ready but if Blaine’s eaten already—”  
  
At this, Blaine’s silent laughter morphed into a loud guffaw and Kurt let out a noise, his free hand darting from Blaine’s body and flinging the closest object to him across the room at the rapidly slamming door. “Get out, Finn!”  
  
“Stop laughing, you _idiot_ ,” Kurt groaned, the arm that wasn’t being crushed by Blaine’s weight smacking at his side. The action only seemed to encourage Blaine’s laughter, his body shaking as he rolled off of Kurt onto his back. “It’s not funny! There is no bigger boner-killer than Finn Hudson, I swear—”  
  
“ _God_ ,” Blaine snorted loudly, his fingers swiping tears from his eyes. “His comment about me having eaten already was totally in reference to me blowing you, oh my God—”  
  
“You give him too much credit,” Kurt muttered, rolling his eyes and Blaine shifted back onto his side, his hand moving toward the shirt bunched up around Kurt’s stomach as though drawn there by some strange force of nature. Kurt inhaled at the pressure of it, at the warm weight of it as it simultaneously calmed and awakened the flutter of butterflies inside his stomach.  
  
“You have an awkward cockblock brother now, this feels like such a cliché,” Blaine chuckled, pausing as the words escaped his lips, his eyes widening. He glanced carefully out of the corner of his eye at Kurt, who stilled at the mention of Finn being his brother, but didn’t say anything in regards to it, his head turning to meet Blaine’s gaze.  
  
He opened his mouth to say something, but instead remained lying on his back with his eyes trained on Blaine’s, the shades of blue in them flickering as he scanned Blaine’s face for the answer that he might want to give. Instead, his mouth closed and he gave Blaine a weak smile, the corners of his mouth curling up ever so slightly as he leaned forward and pressed his lips against Blaine’s, twisting his body until he was facing Blaine completely, his hand roaming up the soft muscles of Blaine’s sides.  
  
He kissed him delicately, as though he thought that would convey all the things that he suddenly couldn’t find the words for. Would tell Blaine not to worry about it because in the strangest way he couldn’t help but consider Finn to be his family. How he was glad of moments like this, despite how horrible they might seem, because he’d never had them. Even when he and Finn had been living together when Kurt’s dad had still been alive, he’d never quite had those familial moments with him.  
  
Blaine made a soft noise, almost like a chuckle as Kurt’s hand moved near his ass, his tongue swiping against the seam of Blaine’s mouth to deepen the kiss and he rolled onto his back, untangling himself from Kurt and, with a cheeky grin lighting up his face, started to walk backward toward the door.  
  
“Now, now, Mr. Hummel, there’s no getting frisky when there’s dinner to be had.”  
  
Kurt pouted, propping himself up on his elbows. “But even Finn came to recognize that you staying up here would mean you didn’t have to be hungry.”  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes and walked closer to the bed, stretching out his hand, palm up, toward Kurt. “Maybe for dessert,” he winked.  
  
Kurt snorted loudly, rolling his eyes before swinging up into a sitting position. With one smooth movement he stood and walked right past Blaine and his hand.  
  
“You’re a child,” he called over his shoulder, unable to hold back a laugh as Blaine caught up to him, wrapping his arms around his middle and pressing a hard, open-mouthed kiss to his cheek.  


* * *

  
The New Directions victory at Nationals in Chicago that year, strangely enough, was also a moment that Kurt couldn’t help holding onto but, oddly enough, it had very little to do with the Glee club. Rather, it had more to do with himself and Carole.  
  
She came home late that night from a shift at the hospital, unable to keep from smiling at the amount of cars in her driveway and the house that, despite the late hour, was still very much awake, the lights on and the faint streams of dance music that leaked through the cracks of the windows and doors. She shifted her purse on her shoulder and eased herself into the house, closing the door quietly behind her despite the minimal need for stealth. She was greeted at the door almost immediately by Puck who, rather than hiding the bottle of cheap champagne in his hand, immediately rushed up to her and wrapped his arms around her in greeting, planting a messy kiss on her cheek before staggering away, his departure followed by Finn showing up almost instantly, his eyes widening at the sight of his mother.  
  
She smiled reassuringly at him, but lifted the arm on which she wore a watch and flashed it at him with a raised eyebrow. “I know you guys want to keep celebrating your win, but it’s probably time to send everyone home.”  
  
She spotted immediately her son’s relief at the fact that he wasn’t going to be punished over the very obvious displays of underage drinking happening under his mother’s roof and he immediately made to disappear and herd out the rest of his club.  
  
“Is Kurt here?” she called after him, her gaze following his outstretched finger up the stairs.  
  
“Don’t make me go get them, Kurt gets really pissy for like a week whenever I walk in on them when they’re—”  
  
“Why don’t you just gather everyone else, honey?” she interrupted before he could finish the sentence, shaking her head in a way only a mother could when he nodded vigorously, glad that he wasn’t being sent upstairs.  
  
She walked up the stairs slowly, straining to hear anything at all over the thump of the bass that still echoed throughout the house, but it alone made it impossible to focus on anything else. She paused outside the boy’s door, her head tilted toward the firm wood as she listened for signs of . . . well, anything that wouldn’t incline her to walk in under any circumstances.  
  
The volume of the music downstairs dropped to silence, but that same silence continued behind Kurt’s door and she raised her hand and knocked lightly, waiting for any acknowledgment of the noise before she gripped the door handle tightly and popped it open.  
  
There was silence in the dark room, the only light coming from the hallway and the tiny, flashing red bulb on the monitor around Kurt’s ankle, just barely exposed where his jeans had bunched up over it. By the light of the hall she could see they were both fully clothed—something that, if she was going to be completely honest, was surprising to her. But that wasn’t what made her pause, what made her entire body loosen and slump against the doorframe, her expression softening in time with the warming of her heart.  
  
She had gotten used to the idea of Kurt being closed off, his gaze hard more often than not, body language defensive, but the Kurt before her was a Kurt that she’d barely even gotten the privilege to see when Burt was alive. Blaine was lying on the bed, one arm wrapped around Kurt’s waist as Kurt lay tucked into his side, his cheek resting on Blaine’s shoulder, a leg cast over Blaine’s lower body, their ankles tangled and one arm wrapped completely around Blaine’s middle, his fingers loosely intertwined in Blaine’s. There were no barriers, nothing that wasn’t completely him, his limbs conforming perfectly to the curves of Blaine’s body, the light smile on his face one of the most genuine she’d ever seen from him.  
  
Carole was about to leave quietly, suddenly feeling less like a mother and more like someone intruding on a wholly private moment, when Kurt’s eyes fluttered slightly against the light that illuminated his face in a warm glow.  
  
He opened them to look at her sleepily, his gaze glassy but clearing as he blinked against the brightness, his eyes focusing on her.  
  
It was funny, because there was a brief instant when his gaze fell from her down to his and Blaine’s intertwined hands, the smile on his face warming as he flexed his hand.  
  
He glanced up again as she spoke, her voice quiet as though she didn’t wish to disturb the moment any more than she already was, despite the fact that it was her original intention when she came up to the room.  
  
“It’s late.”  
  
Kurt bit down on his bottom lip and he raised his upper body slightly to gaze down at Blaine, his gaze roaming over the shadows cast by his features, the long strands of his lashes. She caught the moment when Kurt licked his lips, his gaze lingering on Blaine’s mouth, which was open ever so slightly as he slept, the pink of his tongue barely visible.  
  
“I don’t want to wake him,” Kurt murmured quietly, so softly that she could barely hear him. Like maybe she wasn’t even meant to hear him, hear the quiet little admission that was so weighted in affection.  
  
Carole was a mother. She’d been a mother for eighteen years and she knew two things. She understood that the handbook that was immediately ingrained in her the minute that pregnancy test read positive said that it ought not to matter, that she ought to send the boyfriend home no matter now fast asleep he was. But there was the other part of her that saw Kurt and Blaine and was filled with such warmth that to chill it by breaking the moment would be the hardest thing that she might do.  
  
“It’s late,” she repeated slowly, seeing the way Kurt’s face fell ever so slightly. “So, he probably shouldn’t be making such a long drive.”  
  
Kurt inhaled, his lips parting as air rushed in past them and she could see how, even in the darkness, there was a beautiful sparkle to them, like the sun glistening off the perfect cerulean waters of the sea or a lake hidden deep in the mountains. He nodded, the small movement reserved as though he were being cautious of showing too many emotions and his body started to move down into that area between Blaine’s side and his arm, the place that he seemed guaranteed to fit into even if he didn’t anywhere else.  
  
“No funny business, though, gentlemen,” Carole chided, the words coming out before she could stop them, sounding so much like something Burt would have said that it was simultaneously heart-wrenching and heart-warming.  
  
“Yeah, okay, _Mom_ ,” Kurt muttered automatically as his cheek settled back down against that smooth curve of Blaine’s shoulder, his voice laced with a playful sarcasm, but almost immediately after he said the word “Mom” the both of them froze, as though they both were perfectly aware that it was a slip of tongue, but didn’t know what to do with that information.  
  
Carole hesitated in the doorway, watching Kurt as he stared absentmindedly at a spot just beyond Blaine’s other shoulder, his face immediately shrouded in a strange fog of confusion.  
  
But a moment later, just as she’d prepared herself to simply leave and pretend the slip had never occurred if that was what he wanted, he lifted his eyes and stared directly at her, his gaze determined, grabbing her attention and stilling her movements. A moment later a soft smile formed its way into the corners of his mouth and he nodded at her, the motion barely visible but wholly accepting that, maybe, the slip wasn’t a slip after all.  


* * *

  
As he lay in the darkness of his room, his phone still in his hand and the heat that had filled the room slowly filtering into the chill of a spring night, Kurt held onto those moments. Relished them with all he had to hold until they overpowered that year’s hardness in his heart.


	30. Chapter 30

June 3, 2012  
  
Cass brushed a stray hair behind her ear as she ducked down behind the bar to grab a pair of clean glasses, twirling them around expertly before filling them and pushing them across the bar to the receiving party, accepting payment with a grin. As the counter cleared of college students in need of being served, she let out a relieved sigh and leaned back against it, pulling her hair loose from its ponytail and brushing her hands through her curly blonde strands in order to remake it. Her bangs fell into her eyes only to be flicked back as she turned her gaze to the stage, eyes twinkling in the lights illuminating the artists on it.  
  
Almost as though he could sense her looking, Blaine looked from the crowd he was performing to her, his eyes twinkling in the lights and the smile on his face widening. She tried to keep the fond grin off her face as she took a sip of water, her shoulders swaying to the beat of the music, but there was something about his energy, about the joy that he always brought to stage with every performance. It was captivating to watch, the way they’d all built themselves up after Blaine had been inspired to take his life back in his own hands.  
  
It was funny, really, the way she hadn’t quite noticed the moment when he’d become less than himself, but he’d certainly blown her away when he’d come back.  
  
She glanced up and down the bar, making sure there was no one that was looking for her to actually do her job, but the whole of the bar was fixated on the band performing. She felt something proud burning in her chest as she observed them, the way even the seemingly disinterested ones were tapping at their bottles to the beat, the glowing light shimmering in their eyes as a result of something far more than the lighting of the bar.  
  
Her gaze paused on one observer in particular, freezing as he eased his way through the crowd, his gaze directed at Blaine, and slid into a barstool. He leaned an arm along the wood of the bar, his muscles flexing under the blue-grey of his shirt-sleeves, rolled up to rest just above the (elbow, the smooth line of his jaw casting dramatic shadows across the open collar of his shirt as he gazed up at the stage.  
  
He shocked her, actually, because she hadn’t seen him for months and she barely recognized him. The look in his eyes twinkled with all the blues and greens that had always been captivating to both her and Blaine (though up to a point Blaine would have never admitted it), like the shimmer of sky-blue over the sea-green of an ocean. But the look she knew was cold and hard. Calculating and determined. Kurt watched the stage now with a softness that translated directly into every muscle, every cell of his body, from the affectionate crinkles around his eyes to his right leg as he carelessly crossed it over his left, the hand not holding his chin up resting on the ankle of the boot that delicately clung to his calf. Long, nimble fingers tapped to the beat of the rock song sounding throughout the room and a sudden, inappropriate thought flashed through her mind as to what else those fingers could possibly be doing.  
  
She inhaled sharply through her nose and shook her head, the bangs that had been brushed aside falling back across her forehead as a result. She wondered how in the world he heard her over the sound of the music but he turned his head to look at her, his eyes flashing in a brief expression of recognition and one thin eyebrow raised critically.  
  
“Sorry,” she muttered, standing up a little straighter, partially because there was something about his gaze that required it and partially because she was too proud not to. “Can I get you a drink?”  
  
Kurt didn’t answer for a long time, the fingers of one hand still tapping to the beat of the song, which ended and a new one began during the stretch of time that Kurt watched her. He blinked as the change brought about a calmer, slower piano tune and rather than reply he allowed it to distract him, pulling his attention to the keyboard to the left of the band set-up.  
  
Cass opened her mouth to tell him off in some sort of clever manner that she was sure would have come to her as soon as she spoke, but it was the expression on his face that stilled her, the warmth in his affectionate smile as Blaine introduced the song over its opening melody wholly shocking to her. It was the slow purse of his lips, as though he were trying to hold back explosive emotions, that made her look back on the past couple of months and Blaine’s explanations of the development of their relationship with a new certainty, a new warmth.  
  
It was the melody of the song that she remembered Blaine telling her that he simply couldn’t find the proper words to, the one that had haunted him for weeks before he gave up on it, telling her he’d even misplaced the sheet music and whatever new versions he wrote just didn’t quite compare.  
  
 _You've been on my mind_  
I grow fonder every day,  
Lose myself in time  
Just thinking of your face  
God only knows  
Why it's taken me so long  
To let my doubts go  
You're the only one that I want  
  
Kurt blinked and glanced over at her suddenly, as though he’d forgotten that they’d been speaking and he smiled further still, if it was possible, his eyes twinkling in the near-darkness.  
  
“Just a Coke for me, thanks.”  
  
“Don’t tell me Blaine’s weaned you off the alcohol, because I’d hoped it’d be the other way around,” she said without thinking, clamping her mouth shut quickly and occupying herself with getting his drink as his eyes widened in surprise.  
  
 _I don't know why I'm scared, I've been here before_  
Every feeling, every word, I've imagined it all,  
You never know if you never try  
To forgive your past and simply be mine  
  
“You’re Cass, right?” he asked, turning on the bar stool until he was facing her. “Blaine said I’d remember you if I thought about the bluntest person I’ve had to interact with at this bar, but I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”  
  
She snorted. “That sounds like a very mild description of me, are you sure that’s all he said?”  
  
That tell-tale smirk quirked up the corners of his mouth, the expression familiar but startlingly foreign under the light of his new softness. “He may have had more to say but I guess I was more interested in his mouth’s . . . better uses.”  
  
She raised her eyebrows at him, tilting her head as she slid the glass full of soda toward him. “I see.”  
  
 _I dare you to let me be your, your one and only_  
Promise I'm worthy to hold in your arms  
So come on and give me a chance  
To prove that I'm the one who can  
Walk that mile until the end starts  
  
He ceased paying attention to her almost as soon as the drink was in his hand, but it wasn’t in a rude way. She eased her ass over the edge of the counter until she was perched on it, sitting so that she could see over the crowds, and pondered how oddly endearing it was that the only fragment of attention she’d been given had been out of some semblance of politeness, clearly against the nature of his attention, which constantly sought to focus on the stage.  
  
She’d seen the changes in Blaine, the way he’d somehow found a new form of confidence and determination and joy and she had acknowledged to Matt with some hesitation that, yes, maybe Kurt was somehow good for him, but now she could see that it wasn’t just a one-way street. That the boy in front of her now, despite being the strangest mixture of softness and hardness, seemed far more real than when she’d known him before.  
  
 _(Nobody's perfect, trust me I've learned it)_  
I know it ain't easy, giving up your heart  
  
The little half-smirk lingered on Kurt’s lips, mixing with the look of pure affection as the song and the set drew to a close, the lights illuminating the stage flickering out amidst rounds of applause and the lighting of the bar returning to normal.  
  
In his seat, Kurt’s head ducked down to observe his drink, finger playing with the condensation building around the edges of the glass, only to drip down as his finger passed over it. Cass hopped down from her perch and started making her way back and forth behind the bar as the crowds of people demanded her attention again.  
  
“Hey, stranger.”  
  
Kurt barely moved at the voice in his ear, smiling down at his cup for a moment. He barely reacted at the words and the pressure of a body pressing against his back, the movement brief and fleeting. “As far as pick up lines go, that one’s not very good,” he drawled lightly, glancing at Blaine out of the corner of his eye as the latter moved away and sat down on the bar stool next to him. “Just, fair warning in case you feel like there’s a need to use it again.”  
  
“I wasn’t expecting you,” Blaine continued casually, leaning his arm against the bar and swinging his ass back and forth slightly to rotate the barstool as he gazed at Kurt with a grin on his face.  
  
Kurt winced. “Again, a little bit cliché.”  
  
Blaine rolled his eyes, dark and glittering from the adrenaline of performance and Kurt’s surprise appearance, his eyes trained on Kurt’s hands as they played with the glistening glass of Coke, raising it to his lips. “Kurt . . .” he murmured, his voice impossibly low and gravelly from singing for almost two hours.  
  
Kurt set down his glass and relented, looking fully at Blaine for the first time since his set had finished and he’d pushed his way through the crowds to the bar. He twisted in his seat so that he could face Blaine, the leg that for months had been carrying his ankle monitor reaching out and rubbing slowly against Blaine’s calf. He smirked as Blaine inhaled sharply, his eyes darkening under the dim glow of the bar, his body ceasing its swinging movements in favor of shifting slightly in his seat.  
  
“They took it off early for good behavior,” Kurt murmured softly, his voice almost a purr as the heel of his boot rubbed against Blaine’s denim-clad leg, so low as he leaned near Blaine that Blaine could barely hear him.  
  
“Did they now?” Blaine muttered, wishing there was something more clever for him to say but it suddenly felt like ages since he’d seen Kurt. Years, decades, millennia since Kurt had sat in this very bar with that dark, confident gleam in his eye, wholly outside of the supervision of Carole or Finn the cliché brother that seemed to be incapable of knocking or Rachel his girlfriend who, if the amount of times _she’d_ barged in on them, was really intent on seeing one or both of their penises, or the McKinley High janitor that had almost caught them the night they’d been making out in the parking lot in Blaine’s car. Just him and Kurt with no barriers and no audience. “That’s a bit premature, don’t you think?”  
  
Kurt arched an eyebrow. “You’re being awfully presumptuous, Mr. Anderson. I hope you don’t think that I’m just some floozy that can be picked up and fucked just because you happen to have a pretty face.”  
  
Blaine could barely stop the grin that threatened to spread over his face, instead allowing his tongue to dart out over his lips as he scrutinized Kurt with a heated gaze, leaning forward to brush his fingers over the back of Kurt’s hand, the pressure so light it ticked. He could feel the moment Kurt’s sharp inhale ran through his body. He allowed himself to smile as he breathed against Kurt’s ear, feeling the movements of Kurt’s chest against the thickness of the air between them.  
  
“How about I buy you a drink first, then?”


End file.
